The Murdock and the Mudsucker
by Sophia Hawkins
Summary: The A-Team find themselves involved in a murder mystery when they escort two young women to a mansion where they stand to inherit their family's fortune, if they survive the night.
1. Chapter 1

The Murdock and the Mudsucker

Author's note: As many bizarre and zany situations the A-Team always got involved in, I always figured they would've done well in an old-dark-house movie type scenario. Hope everyone enjoys!

"I'll like it when we get home," Face half commented, half mumbled as he rested his chin on his balled up hand and was just about to fall asleep, "Two weeks back and forth on the road, six days in Virginia trying to find a kidnapped heiress and getting her abductors all tied up nice for the police to haul off, and now it's taking an extra six hours to get back to Los Angeles because we tried crossing an unfinished bridge and had to get the van fixed, at this rate it'll be midnight before we finally get back home."

"Yep, all in a day's work for the A-Team," Murdock proudly said in the seat beside him, causing Face to slowly turn his head and glare at him.

"Oh come on, Face, admit it, you got a kick out of watching them run when they thought we had actually set off that bomb," Hannibal said in a smirk from where he sat up front with B.A.

"Yeah it was funny when it happened, but that was three days ago, I'm hungry _and_ tired, I just want to get back to my house…"

"You mean the old movie actress's summer home you're watching while she's in the hospital?" Murdock smirked.

Face continued, "Crawl into bed and forget that the last two weeks ever happened." He gazed tiredly out the van window and saw the city passing him by in the first tinted color of twilight, before long the sun would be down and it would be nice and dark.

"Hey man, at least we got paid this time," B.A. said, then added under his breath, "Even if it wasn't as much as it should've been."

"So we each had to take a small cut for the damages," Hannibal brushed it off.

"A small cut, Hannibal?" Face repeated.

"$850 a piece up front is better than we've done on the last few jobs," Hannibal reminded him.

"Home again," Murdock said as he pointed to the sign up ahead showing they were back in Los Angeles.

"Hallelujah," Face dryly commented.

B.A. managed to keep from laughing and just kept his eyes on the road ahead; Faceman turned complaining into an art form and always found new ways to be annoying as he whined about something he didn't like on a mission.

"Well I'm looking forward to getting back home too," Murdock said, "I want to make sure they're not relocating me to another room at the V.A."

"Now why would they do that, Murdock?" Hannibal asked.

"Who knows, Colonel? I like the one they got me in because I'm on the ground floor and it's very easy to just step out of the window once the power's cut," Murdock said.

The sun was about down and the road was almost dark, but B.A. could see very well as a woman ran blindly out into the street in front of their van.

"Hey man!" he exclaimed as he jerked the wheel and swerved the van to the side to avoid hitting the woman.

"What was that about?" Face asked.

"Look!" Hannibal pointed and they saw a man run out into the street after the woman, and a second woman was chasing after him.

"Oh this should be a good one to hear," Face cynically commented as he reached for the door on his side.

"Come on, let's see what it is," Hannibal told them.

Though it was getting dark out, they could see the man dressed in a black suit had caught up with the first woman who had red shoulder length hair, and was wearing a yellow dress. He grabbed her by the back of her dress, jerked her back and slapped her and threw her down on the street. The second woman, who had short blonde hair and wore blue jeans, a T-shirt and jean jacket, jumped on the man's back and locked her arm around his neck and told him, "You leave her alone!"

The man was screaming at the second woman and tried to throw her off of him, and finally succeeded, but his victory was short lived because when he turned around he found himself staring down the barrel end of a gun.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Hannibal warned the man.

"That's right, Jack," B.A. said, also holding a gun on the man, "Didn't your mama ever teach you that you don't put your hands on a woman?"

The man was shocked by their sudden appearance but otherwise was unfazed and he told them, "Look, I don't know…who you are, but this is a private matter."

"Not out here," Hannibal calmly told him, "See you're outside, this is public property, so that makes it a public affair. So if I were you, I'd leave these two ladies alone before _you_ wind up getting hurt."

The man could see that he was outnumbered and knew he wouldn't get anywhere like this, so he resorted to a slow and angry retreat, he glared at the two women who stood side by side, the one in the dress half shielding herself behind the one in the jeans, and he told them, "This isn't over yet. You have no idea what you're getting yourself into."

"Well I appreciate your concern," the woman in blue jeans sarcastically remarked, "However I've made it this far without anybody helping me and I trust we'll do just fine without _your_ assistance either. Good day, Roland."

With that, the man turned on his heel and walked off back the way they had come. Hannibal went over to the women with his hand out to shake to let them know he wasn't their enemy and he asked them, "Are you ladies alright?"

"We're fine," the woman in blue said.

B.A. came over to them and the woman in the dress further pushed herself behind the other woman as if for protection.

"It's alright, ladies, we ain't gonna hurt you," B.A. assured them.

"Yeah, but what was that whole spectacle about?" Face asked them, "_If_ you don't mind us asking."

"Well it's like the man said," the woman in blue told them, "It's a private affair."

"I get it," Hannibal smirked at them, "It's a private matter and you don't know us so you won't tell us anything that's private. I understand perfectly, allow me to introduce myself. I'm Hannibal Smith," he pointed to the others, "These are my friends, Templeton Peck, H.M. Murdock, and that's B.A. Baracus."

The timid young woman in the yellow dress said, "I'm Annabelle Wiest, and this is my sister, Nora."

"Well since we're all acquainted now," Hannibal said, "Why don't you tell us why that," he scrunched his face up in as sarcastic an expression as he could manage, "Nice young man…was chasing you."

"He's our cousin, Roland Wiest," Nora answered, "You could say that we've never exactly been close."

"Well that's one thing, but that doesn't amount to chasing someone through the street trying to kill them," Face said.

"It does when there's money at stake," Nora said.

"Nora, please," Annabelle clearly didn't want to get into this.

But Nora pushed her hand off her shoulder and told the men, "If you want the sordid details, I would suggest you check the late night movie channel. You see we found out a few weeks ago that we had some rich grandfather that we never knew about, he hated people and despised his own family, but apparently not enough to cut his relatives out of the will. His lawyer came to see us and told us that we each stood to gain part of the family fortune."

"Is it a large one?" Face couldn't help asking.

"Is twenty million dollars large enough for your liking, gold digger?" Nora asked him.

Face's eyes bugged out and he took a step back when he heard that.

"I'm sensing a catch," Hannibal commented.

"There is," Nora nodded and then shook her head sadly, "Grandpa disappoints me, he never was a very original person, I'll swear he took his idea from some old haunted house movie."

"You see," Annabelle decided to help fill them in on the situation, "The will calls for all remaining relatives to come up to his house and spend the night in each other's company. Based on what happens over the night, that will determine who inherits what."

"Ahhh," Murdock's eyes lit up, "Just like that movie, One Body Too Many…eh…your granddaddy didn't want to be put in an observatory vault, did he?"

"What're you jabbering about now, fool?" B.A. asked.

"Well in that movie, the old man didn't want to be put in the ground, and if he was, then all inheritances were reversed, whoever would get the least amount would get the most and vice versa, so one of the lesser relatives read the will early and hid the body to crisscross the inheritances."

"Well I don't know anything about that," Annabelle said, "But we have to spend a night in his old house, in the company of relatives we've hardly ever met."

"And ours is not the most prestigious family as you may have guessed," Nora added, "Just about everybody in it would do anything to get their hands on the money."

"But not you two ladies, of course," Hannibal said with a knowing smirk.

"Hey, it's not that we can't use the money," Nora told him, "But we ain't gonna do anything crooked to get it, we got our limits."

"Unfortunately, nobody else in the family seems to," Annabelle said, "We've been threatened to stay away from the house and not to go tonight."

"Tonight?" Face repeated, "You're going there tonight?"

"We _were_," Annabelle said.

"But I doubt we'll be able to now," Nora added, and nodded her head to the side, "Somebody's seen to that."

The four men went over to the car Nora was gesturing at and they saw that somebody had slashed the tires.

"Let me guess, your charming cousin?" Hannibal asked.

"If not him, there are plenty more like him," Nora said, "We came out with our bags and found the car like that," she reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, "And I found this placed under the windshield wiper."

Hannibal took the paper and unfolded it and read the warning, "If you have any brains in your head, and value your lives more than money, heed this warning and stay away from Wiest Manor tonight."

"I'm guessing this guy didn't major in poetry when he was in school," Face said.

"There are more," Nora told him, "Since we saw the lawyer, we've gotten three other notes, one slipped under the front door, one of them thrown through the window tied to a rock." She looked back at the punctured car and sighed, "And now it seems they've ultimately seen that we won't get there. We have to arrive before nine o' clock and traveling on foot we're never going to make it."

"Where is this place?" Hannibal asked.

Annabelle took the address out of her pocket and read, "6609 Crescent Hill Drive, the _only_ house in the area, up on a hill away from civilization, isn't _that_ convenient?"

"It is if you're planning to bump somebody off," Murdock murmured to the others.

"Ladies," Hannibal told the sisters as he stuffed the warning note into his jacket pocket, "I think you just hired yourselves a ride to the party."

They both looked stunned.

"We won't take you out of your way," Nora told him, "This is our own bad luck."

"You won't be, we weren't doing anything tonight," Hannibal told them.

"So much for getting some sleep," Face grumbled to Murdock.

"You're serious?" Nora asked Hannibal, "You'd give us a ride?"

"We'll even stay for the reception," he added, flashing his toothy grin that Face unfortunately knew only too well.

The two sisters looked at each other curiously and Hannibal explained, "Look ladies, you said it yourself that you've been threatened…and I can imagine this meeting of the minds is going to occur within the realm that's beyond any and all outside help. It's already out of the way of anybody who you could call on for help, and if there are phones in the house, I could easily see them coming up with their lines cut in the middle of the night." He turned and looked to the other three men and said, "I don't know about the rest of you, but I wouldn't sleep too well tonight knowing that we tossed these two young women over to a pack of money hungry wolves." He looked at the sisters again and said, "It seems to me that you could use a friend, for some protection."

"You?" Nora almost laughed.

"Don't knock it," Face warned her, "We know what we're doing."

"You can't do it," Annabelle told him, "How would we ever explain the four of you staying at the house with us?"

"Well is there any rule in the invitations against bringing company?" Hannibal asked, "Or your boyfriends for that matter?"

"Boyfriends?" Annabelle asked.

"Certainly," Hannibal told them, and explained, "You want the family to meet the new men in your lives." He pointed over to Face and Murdock, "And their father," he pointed to himself, and then to B.A., "And my driver."

B.A. scoffed and rolled his eyes at that. "Aw man, Hannibal, when you get on the jazz you _really_ get on it, you know?"

"Come on, B.A., it's a perfect plan," Hannibal said.

"Yours never are," Face reminded him.

"Face please," Hannibal said to him, "It works out perfectly, they show up at the house as ordered, but they have four other people with them…and if the family thinks you and Murdock are going to be marrying into the family…"

"Then they'd try and kill us to keep the fortune from being divided any further," Murdock concluded.

"Naturally," Hannibal grinned.

Face already knew he was going to regret this plan.

"Now, what time is it?" Hannibal asked.

Murdock consulted the watch he was wearing on his ankle and said, "8:30, Colonel."

"Alright, we know where the party is, let's go crash it," Hannibal told them, "Ladies you can ride with us."

"Somehow I get the feeling we're going to regret this," Nora replied.

"If we live long enough," her sister reminded her.

"Have no fear, ladies," Murdock said as he came between them and offered them his arms, "You'll be perfectly safe with us around."

"Yeah," Face jokingly added as he followed behind them, "If anybody tries to give us trouble, B.A. can just jump out at them and say 'boo'."

B.A.'s only response to that was a low, continuous growl.

Nora and Annabelle stopped in their tracks when they saw the van up ahead, and Murdock still had his arms hooked between theirs and when they stopped he tried moving forward and tripped. "Did the light change already?"

"I'm sure," Hannibal told the sisters, "When you were little your mother told you never to get into a stranger's van, well I can assure you that you'll be perfectly safe traveling with us."

Nora pointed to the gun he held and said, "I'm sure the security is nothing to sneeze at…however if you don't mind I'd like to check the inside before we go anywhere with you."

"I have no objections," Hannibal told her, "But I'm going to tell you up front there are plenty more where this gun came from."

"What for?" Nora asked.

"Because we like a little protection as well," he answered, "Now I'd suggest we get moving if we want to make it in time for the party."

Hannibal got in the front seat with B.A. while Murdock, Face and the Wiest sisters piled into the back, and it was one long, awkward ride for all involved. On the way, Hannibal recommended that before they reach the house, they needed to decide who would be paired up with which sister so they all had their stories straight. Annabelle was seated between Face and Murdock and she looked from one to the other, then she looked at Murdock and asked him, "Mr. Murdock, are you a married man?"

Murdock looked at her sheepishly like she had caught him off guard and he said in a quiet voice with a coy look on his face, "No," and looked like he was going to turn red.

"Well, fancy that, neither am I," Annabelle replied, then leaned over towards Face and murmured into his ear, "He's old enough, ain't he?" To which Face just nodded in response.

"I still don't get why you guys want to help us," Nora leaned over and told Hannibal, "What're you getting out of it?"

"What's the matter, Miss Wiest?" Hannibal asked, "Don't you believe in good Samaritans?"

"No," she shook her head.

"Well aren't _you_ the little optimist?" he replied cynically.

It didn't take them long to find out what the story was with the sisters; Nora was the older sister and had practically raised herself and Annabelle all their lives, the only family they'd had growing up was their mother who had died a few years ago. And since then, they'd had a run of bad luck and encountered a lot of people over the years who only sought to do them harm, so Nora, who already played the role of big sister, had become Annabelle's protector and often relied on brute force to get them out of trouble.

"Well it sounds to me like we came along at just the right time," Hannibal told Nora, "If what we saw tonight was any indication of how you usually do…"

"I would've done fine if you hadn't shown up," she insisted.

"Nora, be nice," Annabelle told her.

"Tell me something, Miss Wiest," Hannibal said, "Are you familiar with the A-Team?"

"What about them?" she asked, and that surprised the men.

"You've heard of them, haven't you?"

"Sure, everybody's heard of them, but nobody's seen them," Annabelle said.

"Myths and legends, that's all that is," Nora said, "Heroes for hire, bah…there ain't no heroes no more."

Hannibal couldn't resist turning in his seat to look back at her and saying in a low, mischievous voice, "Well now I _wouldn't_ say that."

"How do you do?" Murdock held his hand out to Annabelle and said, pointing to himself and to Face, "I'm Myth and he's Legend."

The two sisters looked at each other in disbelief and awe, then back at the men and Nora asked, "Are you serious?"

"He rarely is, but he's correct," Face answered.

"How bout it, ladies?" Hannibal asked, "Think you're up for the company now?"

The sisters looked at each other again and exaggeratedly fell back and slumped against the seats in amazement. Hannibal watched their reaction and just laughed.


	2. Chapter 2

"I'm not sure I get it," Annabelle said during the drive, "Why would you want to help us?"

"I can answer that," Nora told her, "In all the stories you hear about the A-Team, what do you hear? Mercenaries, soldiers for hire, for a fee they'll offer their services, and they can collect a large fee from someone inheriting twenty million dollars."

"Your lack of imagination disturbs me," Hannibal said as he looked back to the two women, "You really don't believe in any good intentions, do you, Miss Wiest?"

"Why should I?" she returned, "All my life every opportunity has only proven otherwise. Everybody's out to get everybody else and nobody does anything for anybody without getting something out of it."

"Well you're certainly the cheerful one," Face sarcastically replied, then turning to Murdock he said, "Murdock, hand me your Swiss army knife, would you?"

"What for?" Murdock asked.

"For some reason I just have a sudden urge to commit hara-kiri," Face told him.

Hannibal smirked and said, "I think, Miss Wiest, that you'll be surprised once you get to know us better."

"I don't _want_ to know you better," Nora remarked, "I just want this whole night to be over."

"Well you're going to have to know us better," Hannibal told her, "Especially if we're going to make this work."

"That's right," Murdock nodded and wrapped his arm around Nora and said, "A woman must know well the family of the man she intends to marry."

Nora turned and glared at him but otherwise didn't do anything.

"I guess that means we're stuck together too," Face said to Annabelle.

"Probably just as well, Facey," Murdock told him, "I got a feeling this one would be only too happy to kill you in the night and steal your clothes."

"What?!"

The van was making a steep trek uphill now and Hannibal could see a house up ahead, "I'm assuming that's the place?"

"Yep," Nora answered, "Has to be, ain't any other house around here for at least a mile."

"How convenient," Face cynically remarked.

"Well what can you expect?" Nora asked, "Apparently our old grandpa was a kook, all the rich old people are right before they die."

"A kook huh?" Murdock grinned, "I'm sorry he passed, he and I might've gotten along perfectly."

"I don't like it, Hannibal," B.A. told the colonel.

"I know," he replied, "Something's wrong and you can smell it from here."

"Really?" Murdock rolled the window down on his side and stuck his head out like a dog.

B.A. glanced to the backseat and told him, "Murdock you crazy fool, pull your head back in here before you do something else crazy."

Murdock got a better look at the mansion up ahead and he whistled and commented, "Spooky looking joint, guys."

"Mister Smith," Annabelle leaned over to the front seat.

"Call me Hannibal," he told her, "_Nobody_ calls me Mister, even my own mother never called me _that_."

"I think you're overlooking one small detail here," Annabelle said.

"Oh?" he turned back to see her, "What's that?"

"How are you going to be able to get your guns inside the house without anybody seeing them?" Annabelle asked him, "I mean you don't think that's not going to draw any attention?"

"Oh I wouldn't worry about that," Hannibal reached into the glove compartment and pulled out an automatic pistol, "You see we believe in carrying more than one size."

Nora gestured to Murdock and Face and asked, "These guys too?"

She turned to Murdock who grinned like the Cheshire cat and grabbed the bill of his cap and pulled it off, revealing a small gun hidden underneath it. Nora looked at her sister, pointed to the pilot and said, "Mental heavyweight."

Annabelle looked at Face in turn and tried to smile but another thought occurred to her and she leaned over towards Hannibal again and asked him, "If you're all supposed to be a family, what do we call you?"

"Oh that's very simple," Hannibal answered, "You call me John, call Face Templeton, and call Murdock…" he turned to Murdock and asked, "Incidentally, Captain, do you have a personal preference for what we should address you as tonight?"

"I get to pick?" Murdock seemed to light up at that idea.

"You got something in mind?" Hannibal asked.

Hannibal felt something jabbing him in the neck and he craned his head back and saw it was Nora poking him, "What's he a captain of?"

Hannibal gestured to Murdock and said, "Captain H.M. Murdock of the United States Air Force, he was our pilot back in 'Nam."

"What's H.M. stand for?" she asked.

"Howling Mad," Murdock enunciated each syllable slowly, deliberately, and rolling every letter on his tongue that he could.

"Again I ask," Nora said to Hannibal, "Is he serious?"

Hannibal just grinned as he bit down on a new cigar and said, "Have no fear, ladies, the A-Team is at your service, and if anybody _does_ try anything funny tonight, they won't be laughing for long."

Nora leaned over to her sister and said into her ear, "Mental cases, the whole lot of them."

Annabelle had no response but she very slightly nodded her head in agreement.

Lights were on in the house, though they didn't offer much illumination outside, it was bright enough for Hannibal to make out a row of cars parked up near a very long garage. "Pull it up here, B.A., and let's go in and meet the family."

"Right," B.A. replied.

"Recognize anybody yet?" Hannibal asked as they slowly drove up to the other cars.

Nora leaned past Murdock to look out the window and she pointed to a black Cadillac, "That looks like Roland's car. The others are anybody's guess. Ol' Roland must've just beaten us here."

They found a place to park the van and everybody got out; Nora and Annabelle collected their luggage and, hand in hand with the captain and the lieutenant they walked up to the front door. B.A. and Hannibal followed behind them and took in the scene before them. The house was three stories tall, Hannibal guessed it had close to 30 rooms; it definitely looked like the place a rich old kook would spend his remaining years, but it didn't look like anyplace that anybody normal would want to stay at.

"Hey Murdock," he said, "What do you think of this place?"

The pilot shook his head and answered, "It's too creepy for my liking, Colonel."

Hannibal's eyebrows went up when he heard that and he said to B.A., "You see? You _know_ it's bad when even a crazy person doesn't want anything to do with it."

B.A. said nothing and just nodded as they headed up the stairs to the front door.

"So what do we do?" Face asked, "Ring the bell?"

"I say we just go in," Nora said as she went to the door, "It's our own family after all, we _were_ invited here."

"Be careful," Murdock told her, "The doorknob might _bite_!"

Nora looked back at him with wide eyes, then she turned to Hannibal and said, "He really _is_ crazy, isn't he?"

"Are you familiar with the term 'you ain't just whistling Dixie'?" Face asked.

Nora reached for the knob but the door opened before she had a chance to grab it. Standing in the doorway was a man who looked somewhere in his 40s, he was tall and lanky and dressed in a black suit and looked like a servant there.

"Hello, Lurch," Hannibal said, "Is everybody here already?"

"And who are you?" the man asked in a stuffy voice.

"We were invited here," Nora said as she and Annabelle squeezed past him and into the house.

The man looked at Hannibal and asked, "Are you family too?"

"Just about," Hannibal answered, and nodded towards the door, "Alright boys, let's head in."

Face and Murdock got in fine, but the man cut off the entrance and took a step outside to see Hannibal and B.A. better. Less than subtly hinting at B.A., the man asked Hannibal, "And him?"

"It's alright, he's with me," Hannibal said as if that was answer enough, and they stepped past the man and made their way inside as well.

"What a place!" they heard Murdock from the next room.

Stepping into the dining room where the lights were on, Hannibal had to agree. It was obvious that the old man who had died in this house was loaded and it amazed Hannibal that the family fortune would amount to _only_ twenty million dollars. Looking at the expensive décor and how immaculately clean the house was, he would guess it cost the old man about a hundred million just to keep the place running as it was for so many years. It didn't look like anybody's house, and he had been in his share of mansions so he knew what he was talking about here. The place was too well put together, everything in an exact place, everything perfectly clean; everything, the chandeliers, the lamps, the furniture, even the bric-a-brac that decorated the inside of a china cupboard built in the wall, it all had to cost thousands of dollars for each individual piece, of that he would bet anything.

"When did your grandfather die?" Hannibal asked.

"Oh I'd say a few months ago," Nora answered, "Everything's been tied up with the lawyers until now."

"Well I don't think he was a kook," Murdock told the others, "If he was a kook then he would've had something _kooky _written in his will like…like the will wouldn't be read for 20 years and then divided up among whatever relatives were still alive."

"What are you going on about now, you crazy fool?" B.A. asked.

"It's just like that old movie, The Cat and the Canary, all the relatives drove the grandfather insane so he left all his money to one relative who must pass a sanity test in order to inherit," Murdock explained, "And the reading of the will had to wait 20 years from the time of his death, but _somebody_ got to it first and read it and…"

Murdock felt his windpipe being crushed as he felt two massive hands wrap around his throat, and behind him he heard B.A. ask bluntly, "You gonna shut up now, Murdock?"

Unable to get any sound out except for strangled grunts, Murdock nodded his head, but regretted doing that also since he scratched his throat against the rings on B.A.'s hand. B.A. released the death grip on his neck and Murdock went over to Face to put some distance between himself and the mud sucker.

"So where is everyone?" Hannibal asked the butler.

"Everyone else arrived already, sir," he answered, "They're upstairs in their rooms, they will be down shortly."

"Okay, thanks," Hannibal said, "If we need you, we'll holler."

They waited until he had left before anybody said anything, when they did, Hannibal told the others that they were going to check out all the rooms on the ground floor before the family came downstairs. He didn't explain what they were looking for, but he told everybody to stick with someone else and to sound off if they found anything that looked out of place. Murdock and Nora went into the kitchen, Face and Annabelle went into the living room, and Hannibal and B.A. checked out the rest of the rooms.

"Where is the icebox in this place?" Murdock asked Nora as they stormed into the kitchen, "I am starving, I am so hungry, I could eat a chair."

They completely stormed past two other servants who were at the stove, and Murdock ignored them as he opened the refrigerator door and stuck his head inside.

"What is this stuff?" he asked Nora, and pulled her down to look inside the fridge, "How long have they kept this stuff in here? This is growing legs, it is getting mobile!" Into Nora's ear Murdock whispered, "Keep your eye on the servants tonight, if they try to offer you coffee, don't drink it."

"Why not?" Nora asked.

"It might be poisoned," he told her.

"Poisoned?"

"Poison!" Murdock screamed as he stood up and held in his hand something he grabbed from the fridge, "Poi-son! Poi-son! Look at this! Cheese isn't supposed to be green! What're they trying to do, kill us?" He tossed the wheel of cheese like it was a Frisbee and pitched it in through the open pantry door. "What other toxic waste are they storing in here? Never trust anything green that's not a vegetable. Look at this stuff." He picked up a bowl of guacamole and tossed it out as well. Then he threw open the freezer door and picked up a box of chocolate chip mint ice cream and repeated, "Poison!" and tossed it over his shoulder also.

* * *

"I don't know what we're supposed to be looking for," Annabelle told Face as she leaned against the fireplace in the living room, "I've never even been to this house before, _how_ am I supposed to know if anything doesn't look right?"

"If there's _anything_ here that doesn't belong, we'll find it," Face answered as he picked up the knickknacks on the coffee table one by one and examined them, "Cheap junk."

"I don't know," Annabelle said as she sat down on the couch, "Maybe coming here was a mistake."

"Well you can't let those people scare you out of your money," Face told her, "It's your inheritance, you're entitled to it."

"Sure," she replied, not sounding convinced, "But say we get the money, then what? After taxes it's still a lot of money but you know what money does to people."

"I know, I know," Face said. He would never forget the night that Murdock had been bunking with him and kept him up all night watching the old silent movie, Greed, on the television. Two and a half hours of lousy music, no sound, and one depressing as hell storyline.

"And if we do get the money, then we're going to be a target," Annabelle added, "All any of our relatives has to do is find out where we live and they could come after us. I wouldn't put it past them to break in during the middle of the night and kill us just to get their hands on the money."

"You certainly come from a pleasant bunch of people, don't you?" Face sarcastically asked.

"We can't help _that_," she said.

"I, know you can't," he replied as he sat down beside her, "But with twenty million dollars you could sure get a change of address couldn't you? Maybe go somewhere out of state, or even out of the country, how far do you think these people would be willing to go to get their hands on the fortune?"

"I don't want to even think about that," Annabelle said, "If I did I'd probably never sleep again."

"Ah, _those_ kinds, eh?" Face asked, trying to keep the conversation relatively upbeat. If he had to spend the night in this mausoleum he'd prefer if every minute spent there wasn't absorbed in dark and depressing schools of thought, there would be plenty of those anyway and he knew it.

Annabelle glanced up to the high ceiling and Face looked in the same direction, he wasn't sure _what_ they were looking at but if it was something good, he wanted in on the view. Then Annabelle looked down at the floor and he did the same, he _still_ wasn't sure what they were looking for but he was enjoying the company anyway.

"I want to apologize for the way my sister's acted," she told Face, "And, I would also like to apologize in advance for whatever else she does tonight, I know she'll have plenty of chances."

Face knew that the first rule of etiquette when talking to a woman was it never helped to insult her family, no matter how much they deserved it, so he tried to take the long way around on that one and said, "She's definitely a colorful character."

Annabelle gave a small smile and said, "She's always been that way, I guess it goes with her role of being the older sister, she always figured she had to protect me from everything, even now…and I guess she's not wrong." She laughed nervously as she added, "Even _now_ I need her to protect me from everything."

Face reached over and casually put his hand on her shoulder and started to say that that department had been expanded for the night, but when she turned and looked at him he forgot everything he was going to say. Suddenly something killed his mood and he pulled his hand back where it belonged. A minute later they heard a commotion coming from the kitchen that sounded like every piece of cookware was being hurled through the room and hitting the wall. They saw Murdock and Nora come running out of the kitchen and Murdock was screaming about conspiracy and tyranny and as they came into the living room he told Face, "Don't drink the coffee, they've poisoned it."

"Who?" Face asked.

"The cooks in the kitchen," Murdock answered, "I don't like the looks of this place, Facey, everywhere you go you walk into servants, and I'll bet you _they're_ looking to cash on in this whole mess as well. There're too many of them around for it to be coincidence, they want to kill off the whole family so they can keep the money for themselves. It all adds up! Why else would anybody work as someone else's servant unless they were planning to cash in on it?"

Nora turned to the others and said, "You know he's got a good point there, and twenty million is a _lot _to cash in on."

"Aren't you forgetting something?" Face asked, "They're not part of the family."

"We don't know who's getting what and we _won't_ know until tomorrow," Nora told him, "For all we know we've all been dragged up here for nothing and everything _is_ going to go to the help."

"Then I guess dinner is also out of the question," Face said.

"You can say that again," Nora replied.

"Why?" Murdock asked, "Didn't you hear him the first time?"

"Hey," Hannibal and B.A. appeared in the entranceway, "Did you guys find anything?"

The unanimous answer was no and the girls included the fact that they didn't have one idea what they were looking for.

"Well we didn't turn up anything either," Hannibal told them, "And we _know_ what we're looking for, so don't feel too bad."

"Hannibal," Murdock reached over and poked him in the shoulder to make sure he had the Colonel's attention, "This is very vital, don't drink the coffee."

"What coffee?" Hannibal asked.

"It doesn't matter _what_ coffee, just don't drink it!" Murdock told him, "You do and you won't ever have to worry about sleeping again, believe me."

"Ah who could believe anything you say, fool?" B.A. asked, "You always spouting off your crazy jibber jabber, never makes any sense."

"But B.A…" Murdock tried to reason with the man.

But B.A. wasn't in the mood to hear it, whatever _it_ was, and he told Murdock, "Shut up, fool!"

"But I…" Murdock turned to the others.

"Shut up," Nora told him also.

Murdock pouted and folded his arms against his chest and said, "I didn't say anything."

"You can't talk to him like that," Face told Nora.

"I can talk to him however I like, I'm going to be married to him, aren't I?" Nora asked.

Face just about asked what she was talking about, then he remembered their cover story and he got into his role, "Well that's still no excuse! He's my brother and I don't appreciate anybody talking to him like that, I don't care if you _are_ going to be his wife."

"Well that's fine with me," Nora told him, "You're not invited to stay with us."

"Oh yeah!?" Face rose to his feet and stared her down.

"Yeah!" Nora responded as she stared him _up_.

"They're as good as family already," Hannibal murmured to B.A., who only nodded in response.

The ring he heard in his ears a few seconds later was almost deafening, and Hannibal wasn't the only one that had heard it. Nora and Face had stopped arguing and Murdock had jumped at the noise. What was that? It happened again and Hannibal let out a breath of relief as he realized it was just the clock striking the hour.

Murdock looked up to the ceiling as the ringing continued because that seemed to be where the noise was coming from, somewhere up on the second floor.

"It's 9 o' clock," Face told Hannibal.

"Well then," Hannibal replied, "I guess we're going to meet the family now."


	3. Chapter 3

The tension hung in the air so thick it could've been cut with a chainsaw as the A-Team and the two Wiest sisters stood in the middle of the room and listened to the footsteps of the many relatives coming down the stairs. Now they were going to get a look at this rogue gallery and see just what kind of people they were going to be dealing with that night. The ticking of the clock was perfectly in sync with the beating of their hearts as the anticipation ate away at them to see who else was in this house.

The relatives entered the living room in a single file, and Hannibal got the strangest feeling that he was looking at a funeral procession; almost every member of the family was dressed in black, they all had solemn faces and nobody spoke a word to anybody else.

Murdock and Face were standing beside each other and Murdock's eyes roamed around the room and watched everybody who came in, and he leaned into Face and asked him, "Do you see what I see?"

"I think so," Face nodded.

Hannibal saw it too. He looked back at Nora and Annabelle, and he remembered that they had never said how old they were, however if Hannibal had to guess he would peg Annabelle at 22 or 23, and Nora at 24 or 25, at best. It was obvious at a first glance that they were the youngest members of this family; all the men and the few women who had already arrived at the house earlier in the night, ranged from ages he estimated of 35 and 60, no spring chickens here, that was for sure. Compared to this family of wolves, the two sisters looked like a couple of toddlers, he didn't know what to make of that. And, just as Nora had said, Roland was there in the midst of the whole thing, and seeing him in a better light Hannibal knew he was nearing 40 as well. So why he felt a need to chase and terrorize two women hardly out of their teen years, the Colonel couldn't figure out for the life of him.

Another man walked in ahead of the others; an older man, probably near 50, tall, skinny, also dressed like he just got back from a hanging, and when he stood at the front of the line he looked around and asked, "Is everyone here and accounted for?"

Low murmurs from all sides of the room attested to something of that nature.

"And you are?" Hannibal asked.

"I," the man replied, "Am Thomas Rogers, Mr. Wiest's attorney. Who are _you_?"

"Yes," Roland spoke up, and the other relatives started to stare at them, "_You're_ not part of the family, so what business have _you_ here on this night?"

"Well we heard there was going to be a little social gathering so we thought we'd come and crash the party," Hannibal answered coyly.

The lawyer said firmly, "This is a family _only_ affair, sir."

"Oh that's alright," Hannibal told him, "We're just about family. You see," he pointed to Face and Murdock and said, "My sons are engaged to these two," he couldn't resist cocking his head to the side to look at Annabelle and Nora as he described them as, "Delicate little women." When Nora glared back at him, he was grateful there was no truth in the saying 'if looks could kill', otherwise he could be buried now, but he ignored that and continued, "So you see we're practically family."

"I don't believe it," Roland said, "You four circus freaks just crawled out of the woodwork _tonight_."

"You know that, how?" Hannibal asked, "Did you _ask_ your cousins if they were engaged?"

"No, but…"

"Well there you go," Hannibal said calmly and dismissively, "Had you bothered to ask earlier, you would have found out that my boys have been with these young women for nearly six months now, and they're very serious."

He knew he'd lost some credibility on that last one when Murdock flashed one of his crazier smiles at the family, but he held his ground on his statement nonetheless.

"And who is _that_?" Roland asked, pointing at B.A., "I suppose you're going to say he's your son too."

"Well now that would just be silly, wouldn't it?" Hannibal asked, "He's my driver, the doctor doesn't approve of me using my car at night anymore."

Rogers looked at Hannibal curiously and said, "I suppose it will be allowable to let you stay for this."

"What exactly _is_ this anyway?" Face asked, "If you don't mind us asking, that is."

"Mr. Wiest left specific instructions that before any of his heirs could inherit anything from his estate, all surviving members of his family must spend one night in his home. The inheritances will be determined tomorrow."

"Yeah but you've already read the will," Nora told him, "So you already know who's going to get what."

Rogers held up his hands and said, "Miss Wiest, please, calm down…I worked for your grandfather for 20 years."

Murdock leaned over to Face and whispered something in his ear when he heard that, Face said nothing in return but his eyes widened at something Murdock said to him.

"His unfortunate death ended my employment with him but I _still_ have my orders to follow on his behalf," the lawyer continued.

"Orders?" Nora repeated, and chuckled humorlessly, "You sound like an SS guard running the camps."

Face saw Annabelle turn away as she closed her eyes and raised her hands up to her ears. It was obvious that she was anticipating a lot of trouble to start on behalf of her older sister, and Face didn't know that she was entirely wrong.

One of the older women spoke up and replied to Nora, "I agree this whole thing is absurd, proving only what the family has always known, my brother _was_ crazy; if he'd had any sense he would've cut to the chase and immediately dismissed all…" she looked Nora up and down and said, "Undesirables, from his will from the get-go."

Nora glared at the woman and said, "And what makes you think your brother left_ you_ anything? It's to my understanding that you didn't even see him in the last three years of his life."

"Well we can already guess who _was_ cut from the will," a man who was somewhere in his 50s said.

"And who are you, sir?" Hannibal inquired.

"I am Henry Fulton Wiest," he answered, "And I can say with full certainty, that _no_ person, sane or otherwise, would ever leave his estate to a couple of horrible little _children_," he glared at the sisters, "Such as these two. They never worked their whole lives, and my brother would have enough sense about him to know better than to leave his money to a couple of selfish, ungrateful little _brats_."

"Oh yeah old man?" Nora asked as she started over to him, "Well I'm gonna…"

Murdock snaked his arms around her waist and yanked her back, "Nora, calm down, dear."

Hannibal kept his mind on the business at hand and he asked Rogers, "So what's this whole thing about? Why does everybody have to stay the night in this place to find out what they're going to get?"

"As I said before," the lawyer told Hannibal, "I knew Mr. Wiest for 20 years, I should like to think in that time I knew very well what and how he thought. And I _do_ know that Mr. Wiest requested that after his death, someone should observe his family in close quarters to determine who is worthy of the inheritance and who is not."

"Based on what?" Face asked.

"Based on the family's _genuine_ behavior," Rogers answered, "The old man isn't here anymore to see how his relatives act, thankfully, but I think the truth will come out over the night just who _is_ worthy of what amount of the estate."

"That might be, but the whole thing sounds screwy to me," Hannibal said.

"Me too," B.A. added, "There's something going on here that don't seem right, and if it ain't, then I'm gonna find out what it is; and trust me, if I do, you ain't gonna like it."

"I'm sure, Mr. Rogers," Hannibal continued, "That there is a catch in all this, I seriously doubt that old Grandpa planned this out just so everybody could come up to his house and spend the night looking at each other."

"Well there _are_ conditions, Mister…?"

"Smith, John Smith," Hannibal answered, and pointed at the Lieutenant and the Captain, "This is my youngest boy, Templeton, and that's my older boy…"

"My name," Murdock said as he stepped forward and spoke in one of his stuffier tones, "Is H.M. Murdock von Baron Richthofen Smith." Face and Hannibal fought to keep from smirking at his response. Well, Hannibal _did_ give him a choice of what he wanted to be called for the night. But then Murdock took it a step further and added, "My friends call me Murdock but you may call me Keith."

Face was so close to breaking he about buried his face in the back of Hannibal's jacket to let the dam break, but he managed to keep a semi straight face, as did the others, and once the moment passed the seriousness of the atmosphere had returned, and Hannibal asked the lawyer, "_What_ conditions?"

It was obvious from the look on the lawyer's face that he was just _hoping_ Hannibal would ask him that. "Mr. Wiest specified that should it be known that any of his relatives did in fact _not_ spend the full night at his estate, they are immediately cut from the will entirely." A few rounds of groans and grumbles went around the room and the lawyer continued, "As such, since there _is_ rather a large turnout, all guests who plan to spend the night must write their names down on a roster in on the dining room table."

"I get it," Face said, "Run a head count against all the names and make sure everyone's present and accounted for."

"Then I guess we ought to sign it as well," Annabelle spoke up.

Nora said nothing but she followed her sister out of the living room and into the dining room. Face turned to Hannibal to ask if that meant they signed it too, but the look on the Colonel's face already answered that question and he and Murdock followed the women into the next room.

Single file again, everybody lined up at the table to sign their names. Annabelle went first, and then Nora, and then Murdock was behind her and as he neared the book he started arguing with his hands about which one of them was going to write his name down. Finally he decided that the right hand would do it since you never heard of a left hand man being reliable for anything. As he wrote his name on the next line though, he glanced over the other names on the sheet. Putting his finger by each name he counted down the list, "One little two little three little Indians, four little five little six little Indians…seven little eight little nine little Indians…"

Face was poking him to hurry up, so Murdock signed his name and stood aside so Face could write his down as well.

"This whole thing seems weird, don't you think, Murdock?" Face asked.

"Something's definitely off about the whole thing," Nora agreed, "You get a load of those buzzards in there?"

"Yeah," Face slightly nodded as he looked back in at the gander of people in black, "I'd say _off_ is a good way of describing them." Face glanced over some of the other names:

Agnes Wiest

Henry Fulton Wiest

Jonathan Wiest

Kyle Wiest

Jane Wiest

Nellie Wiest

Charles Wiest

Roland Wiest

"I'm guessing nobody in this family ever marries," Face commented.

"Why would anybody want to marry anyone from this family?" Nora remarked, "Anybody who knows about the Wiests knows they're no good, none of them."

"Hmm," Face said as he put the pen down, "Sounds like a place I'd fit into perfectly, how ironic."

"Hey Facey," Murdock tried to get his attention, "Did you see that?"

"See what?" Face turned to where Murdock was looking and saw what had grabbed hold of his interest. Over in the corner of the room sat one large, very expensive looking grand piano that was not new but had been shined to perfection so it looked the part.

"You think it's in tune?" Face asked as they went over to it.

"_Nothing's_ in tune in this place," Nora said.

"Maybe just not in tune with the right things," Murdock suggested.

Face tested out the keys and found that surprisingly the piano was very much in tune. "Somebody fixed it recently."

"I wonder why?" Annabelle asked, "Grandpa's been dead for at least two months, and I doubt he would've had any use for it immediately before that."

"Hey I got an idea," Murdock said as he pushed Face aside, "Let me try this." He sat down on the piano bench and cracked his knuckles, then started playing something on the keys that was all one piece and it had a low, ominous tune to it.

"What is that?" Face asked, thinking that for some reason the music sounded very familiar.

"Remember that movie with the Indian dolls?" Murdock asked as he continued to play the same beat over and over, "Every time somebody got killed, one doll disappeared, remember the nursery rhyme? 'Ten little Indians boys went out to dine, one choked his little self and then there were nine'," he sang in a deep, borderline sinister voice.

"The Ten Little Indians," Annabelle noted, "I think I remember something about that." She turned to her sister and asked, "Don't you, Nora?"

"Not really," she shook her head, "How did it go? 'Four little Indians on LSD, one freaked out and then there were three'?"

"No that's a different kind altogether," Murdock told her. Then an idea struck him and he stood up and told Face, "I've got it, you know they changed the name of the rhyme once before, and they could change it again and I've got the perfect re-title for it."

"What's that?" Face decided to humor him.

Murdock grinned as he answered, "The 10 Little Mudsuckers."

Face choked on a laugh and responded, "Murdock, it was nice knowing you."

"Oh come on, Face, listen to this," Murdock pounded the keys again and drudged out in a voice so low it could've sat on the floor without assistance, "Ten little mudsuckers went out to dine, one choked himself and then there were nine. Nine little mudsuckers stayed up late, one overslept and then there were eight. Eight little mudsuckers getting into…" Murdock was cut off when he felt somebody's hands around his throat choking the life out of him.

B.A. leaned down towards him and said, "Didn't I tell you to shut up, Murdock?"

"Do you always do that to him?" Nora asked B.A.

"No," he answered as he let go of Murdock's neck, "Only when the fool tries to drive me crazy."

Nora leaned over to her sister and murmured, "That ship definitely sailed a long time ago."

B.A. turned and glared at her, "What did you say?"

"What did I say?" Nora asked Annabelle.

"I didn't hear anything," she answered.

"Yeah, neither did I," Nora added.

B.A. growled under his breath and it was obvious he didn't believe them but he wasn't going to press the issue either, he had a feeling that no matter what happened he'd lose that argument.

Hannibal cleared his throat and stood in the doorway and said, "_Children_, I suggest you get back in here so we can get acquainted with everybody."

"I don't like this," Nora murmured to Murdock.

"Me either," Annabelle whispered to Face.

"Well don't worry," Face assured her, "With us around, nothing's going to happen."

"I'll believe that when I see it," Nora replied as they headed back into the living room.

* * *

Everybody sat down in the living room and at the lawyer's assistance, everybody introduced themselves and their relation to the departed, Lyle Wiest.

The youngest looking of the three women went first. She was in her 30s and had a head full of blond curls sticking out from under the black hat she wore.

"I'm Jane Wiest, and I'm one of the grandchildren."

"Likewise," said Roland.

"Me too," said another man in his 30s, "I'm Kyle Wiest."

"I," the woman they already knew to be Lyle's sister said, "Am Nellie Wiest, and Lyle was my brother."

"Mine as well," Henry added.

Charles Wiest went next, a man in his early 40s who appeared anxious about something, and he introduced himself as a second cousin to the family on his father's side. The third woman, Agnes, was over 50 and her relation to the deceased was he was her uncle. Jonathan Wiest was another man in his 40s and he was a great nephew. That left two men in their early 60s, Lucien and Leopold, distant cousins.

Hannibal watched this circus before him and something occurred to him, "There are four grandchildren of Mr. Wiest's here, where are his own children?"

"Unfortunately," Rogers told Hannibal, "Mr. Wiest's children died several years ago."

"Together?" Hannibal asked.

"No," Rogers answered, "One son died in a car wreck, another died in a fire, one daughter died of a heart disease, another daughter drowned in an accident, and the other killed herself."

Hannibal looked over to Annabelle and Nora and asked them, "Your relation to this family is through your father?"

"No," Annabelle answered, "Our mother's name was Wiest, she never changed it after she was married."

Hannibal didn't ask which of these three unfortunate women was their mother, he didn't want to put them through that, and he didn't want to know.

Face leaned over to Murdock and said, "Kind of ironic how all the kids died off, don't you think?"

"Convenient," Murdock corrected him.

"Bad luck seems to run rampant in this family," Hannibal noted.

"Luck is all in how you perceive it," Jane Wiest told Hannibal, "In life I found Grandpa to be a miserable excuse for a human being, now he's gone and he's leaving us his money, I consider that a run of good luck for a change."

"_If_ you get it," Hannibal replied coyly, "That has yet to be determined."

He couldn't help noticing that there was quite an age difference between the grandchildren; even among themselves there was still a massive age gap between the two sisters, Roland and Jane. He wasn't sure if it was supposed to mean anything and if it did, he couldn't think of what it was. Although it suggested to him that it meant their mother had to have been one of the youngest children of the family, and whoever those two wolves belonged to, must have been among the elder children. That would certainly explain why there was a 10 year difference between the members of the same generation in the Wiest clan.

The gears were turning in his head and something was starting to make sense to him, though he wasn't sure what it added up to. For the family barely knowing one another, one thing that was in common with all the other relatives was that none of them were happy to see the two youngest grandchildren and in fact everyone seemed to despise them, as if they had no business there. Now, Nora had said they didn't even know their grandfather, so it stood to reason he hadn't seen them or if he had, it wouldn't have been for many years. With that in mind, there was no way these two could possibly be considered the favorite grandchildren. And while it was true that Hannibal didn't know Lyle Wiest and probably wouldn't want to either, it still made sense if the man had had _any_ favorite relatives, _they_ would be entitled to the biggest share. It was only if Nora and Annabelle were his favorite by default because he never had to know them, that there could possibly be any risk of them coming out with the largest inheritance. While that could be possible, the Colonel wasn't sure there was any merit to the thought, but if not, why then did everyone else in the family gang up against these two young girls? What possible reason could they have for hating them so and making it clear they weren't welcome, even though they were invited by the old man's lawyer?

No matter which way Hannibal looked at it, he couldn't think of an answer, but he figured spending a night shut in with this family of dodos ought to explain things soon enough.

* * *

"So let's recap what the rules are for staying here and getting the money," Face said as they spoke in the kitchen in something resembling privacy, "Nobody's allowed to leave this house or they automatically forfeit their rights to the money. Nobody is allowed to use the phone and call out to anybody for any reason. We have to interact with the weirdoes of this family all night in order to guarantee a nice sized piece of the inheritance and have absolutely _no_ idea what's necessary to make sure that happens."

"It's a weird plan alright," Hannibal said, "But I guess the grandpa must've figured it would work."

"You know," Nora said from where she watched the door to make sure nobody eavesdropped on them, "There's still _no_ guarantee that the money isn't just going to go to the servants anyway. I wouldn't put it past Grandpa to have a sense of humor like that."

Hannibal lit a new cigar and pocketed his lighter when another thought occurred to him, "Or his lawyer?"

"What do you mean, Hannibal?" B.A. asked.

"Two thoughts," Hannibal counted them off, "Either one, nobody has seen this will so perhaps these are not the old man's instructions but rather his attorney's. Or two, the money doesn't go to the family, and it doesn't go to the servants, it goes to his attorney, and he's just stringing everybody along for this for his own sadistic reasons."

"Then _we_ gotta get sadistic right back at him," Nora said.

Murdock hadn't said a word since they went into the kitchen; instead he kept himself occupied by looking through all the cupboards and cabinets and examining all the dishes and cooking spices and whatever else was tucked away behind the small varnished wooden doors with brass handles. His nose picked up on a steadily growing aroma and he turned around and saw the coffeepot was on the stove and just getting ready to percolate. He drew one side of his jacket up over his mouth and nose and hissed at it and then picked the pot up, tiptoed over to the sink and poured the coffee down the drain.

"So what would you suggest we do?" Annabelle asked Hannibal.

"I don't know yet," he said, "But whatever you do, nobody go anywhere alone in this house, I'm not convinced that your relatives are all bark just yet." He looked to B.A. and over to Murdock and told them, "One of us stays with them at all time."

"Right," B.A. agreed.

"You got it, Colonel," Murdock said as he put the empty coffeepot back on the stove.

The maid came in at that time; a short, timid looking woman in her late 40s who hadn't said a word to any of them all night, and it didn't bother anybody if it stayed that way. As they cleared out of the kitchen one by one, Murdock turned and said to her, "I think that coffee's been on the burner too long, it done evaporated!" And he ran out of the kitchen behind the others.


	4. Chapter 4

Rejoining with the family in the living room, Hannibal decided to try and make small talk with the relatives to try and know them a little better, so he'd have some idea of what was going on around here. In the meantime though he told the others to make themselves scarce and check out the rest of the house. Hand in hand, Annabelle and Face, and Nora and Murdock made their way through the first floor labyrinth of doors. Face opened one up and turned on the lights. "This looks like the sitting room."

"I've never understood what those were for," Murdock told him, "You sit in _every_ room…or do you?"

"And I don't get why they're necessary," Nora added, "There's no TV in the living room so it could be a sitting room as well."

"Maybe they needed two of them when the family was younger and more members were still alive," Annabelle guessed.

"I doubt it," Nora said, "It's to my understanding that Ol' Grandpa lived here for about 40 years, he didn't want his family around near the end of his life, why would he want anymore of them around for the prime of it?"

"That's a good point," Face agreed, "Usually it's only towards the end that you want your family around, when you're old, deaf, senile, could go any minute, and don't have to pay any attention to their bellyaching."

They walked into the room and looked the place over. Once again, very nice, very expensive furniture, this stuff Face noticed looked like it never got sat on. A perfectly clean fireplace, chandeliers cleaned to perfection that they looked brand new.

"It's a nice looking place," Face admitted.

"It's a tomb," Nora said.

"I think she might be right, Faceman," Murdock said as he pulled his jacket tighter, "It's cold in here."

"Old houses are supposed to be hard to heat, but doesn't this place have central heating since it's got electricity?" Face asked.

"Well it still _is_ an old house, it looks like the fireplaces are still the main source of heat for the house," Annabelle pointed out, "But this one looks like it's never been used, so that would explain why this room is so much colder than the others."

Face and Murdock went around the room casually looking everything over but also looking for anything suspicious, behind the couch, under the rugs, behind the curtains, still coming up empty.

"Exactly _what_ is it you're supposed to be looking for?" Nora asked.

"I don't know," Face confessed, "But we'll know it when we find it."

Nora looked at them funnily and said, "You guys are _really_ the A-Team?"

"Well we ain't the Ritz Brothers," Murdock told her.

"No offense," Nora put her hands up, "But you're not exactly what I expected. With all the stories going around the city about you guys, I was expecting something more like a S.W.A.T. Team or something."

"Well," Face was used to hearing these kinds of remarks from people when they first met him but he had to admit it was starting to get old, so he gritted his teeth for now, and forced himself to remain civil with them as he said, "You'd be surprised how often we get that. But I think before the night's over, you'll be convinced."

"Oh I'm convinced," Nora said, "I'm just not sure of what yet."

"Nora, please," Annabelle replied, "They're trying to help us."

"And I'm supposed to be grateful for that, I suppose?" Nora asked her sister, "Nobody has _ever_ helped us before in our lives, now suddenly we got four weirdoes who want to help us, I'm supposed to believe that? I'm supposed to buy that they're here to do good by us? Why would I be stupid enough to believe that?"

"Because you need to trust somebody," Murdock told her, "And you can't trust those vultures you call family."

That was one reason Face admired Murdock; he personally was getting to the point he was tempted to strangle Nora to shut her up, but Murdock was always able to remain calm and get the point across to people like that. However, Nora was still adamant and she turned to Murdock and said venomously, "Meaning you, I suppose?"

"Well let's face it," he smiled at her, "You don't have a choice right now."

* * *

They checked the other rooms on the ground floor and encountered an old fashioned study, a well furnished den, a private library, and a billiard room with two full sized but well worn green topped pool tables. Murdock took in every room with a look of amaze and a whistle of approval and he told Face, "It's too bad you can't scam _this_ place for us sometime, Facey, Lynch would _never_ think to look for us here."

Face scratched his ear and asked Annabelle, "That reminds me, who _does_ get the house? Has that been determined?"

"Beats me," she answered, "Mr. Rogers only told us about the money we stand to inherit, he didn't say anything about the house."

"Probably left _that_ to the servants as well," Nora commented as she took a pool cue off the rack.

A thought occurred to Murdock and he asked her, "Incidentally, how _did_ your grandfather die?"

"What?" she asked.

"How did he die?" he repeated, "Was it natural causes, or did he slip in the tub and bash his head open, or was he eaten by a bear, what?"

Nora shrugged, "You got me, all I know is the lawyer said he died. Of course we never saw the body so we can't confirm that, but to go through all this trouble I'd like to think he's telling the truth."

"Hmmm," now an idea occurred to Face.

"What is it?" Murdock asked.

"If a copy of that will is anywhere to be found in this house, it would be the lawyer that has it," Face said, "And you can be sure _somebody_ in the whole bunch is going to be pretty desperate to find out what it says. And if I were one of them, and I was going to kill _anybody_ in this house, it wouldn't be these two," he pointed to the girls, "It would be the lawyer, he's the only one that's got the answers."

"Well if he croaks during the night we'll know you're right," Nora said, "But then what?"

"I'm just saying if somebody _is_ going to die, it makes the most sense for him to be the one that's murdered," Face said, "So when we're stuck with that bunch of almond bars again, keep your eyes open."

"You think I'm going to close them with those vipers around?" Annabelle asked, and shook her head, "I doubt I'll be getting any sleep tonight."

"I know the feeling," Face replied, although not for the same reason.

Murdock was leaned over one of the pool tables trying to figure out how to sink a striped ball and he commented to Face, "Too bad you _couldn't_ get this place for us sometime, Facey, we could really snazzy it up, make this a whole game room and get in an air hockey table, a foosball table, a ping-pong table…"

Nora jabbed Face in the shoulder and asked him, "What is he going on about now?"

Face wasn't in the mood to explain so he tried to get out of it entirely by asking her, "What, you suddenly going to start listening to the ramblings of a crazy person?"

* * *

After an hour of listening to the extended Wiest family talk openly and honestly about their lives, their likes and their many dislikes, most of them for their other relatives, and what they planned to do with the $20 million when they got it, Hannibal suddenly felt in dire need of some fresh air and so left the living room, pulled the doors shut on them, and went to smoke in the kitchen. B.A. followed him out of the living room and Hannibal asked, "Well, what do you think of the charming family in there?"

"The whole family's crazier than Murdock, Hannibal," B.A. answered.

"Yah…they definitely seem to have a few screws loosened among them…and if I had to guess, I'd say one brain being split between them all. Howard Hughes' relatives have got nothing on _this_ family," Hannibal said as he lit his cigar, "But do you think any of them would be capable of murder in order to get a larger piece of the inheritance?"

"A few of them I'd say it's likely," B.A. told him, "Especially that sucker, Roland."

"Oh you got that feeling too, eh?" Hannibal asked humorously, "Now you know…Rogers the lawyer said that nobody in the family can leave the house until morning, or they're automatically cut from the will. But there's nothing saying _we_ can't leave the house and come back, so if we need to get anything out of the van," he added casually, "Or see if they have anything out in their cars that's of interest to us…then we can."

B.A. nodded in agreement. Hannibal looked around and noted how quiet the house was and he said, "I wonder how the others are coming along."

The kitchen door opened and the maid came back in, ignored both men and walked past them and headed into the pantry. Hannibal waited by the door and when she reappeared he stopped her and said, "Excuse me, Miss."

"Yes sir," she said in a low, almost congested voice.

"What's your name?" Hannibal asked.

"Dale Merkel, sir," she said.

"Have you worked here long?" Hannibal asked her.

"I've worked here for three years, sir," she answered.

"Then you knew Mr. Wiest well?"

"As well as any employee can know their employer," she said, "My quarters are in the west wing."

"What kind of man was he?" Hannibal asked, "What was he like?"

She looked from him to B.A. and back to Hannibal and said, "He was a man what enjoyed his privacy. That is why he lived in this house so far from anyone else, he had no tolerance for neighbors."

"Was he paranoid?"

"No, just private."

"Did his family ever come to see him?" Hannibal asked.

"Rarely that I recall," Dale told him.

Now Hannibal decided to go in for the kill, "Do you really think he would leave his estate to that family of his?"

The woman turned her nose up a bit and responded, "What Mr. Wiest decided to do with his money was his own business, but I sincerely doubt it."

"Then…to you, and the other servants in this house?" Hannibal asked.

"I wouldn't know about that, sir," she answered, "Mr. Wiest never discussed his financials with us."

"Only with his lawyer," Hannibal said.

"That is correct," she told him, "Mr. Rogers was the only person Mr. Wiest confided in about his estate. Now if you'll excuse me…"

She walked past them and headed back out the door, leaving the Colonel and the Sergeant alone in the kitchen.

"Well what do you think?" Hannibal asked B.A.

He could tell from the look on the other man's face that B.A. wasn't convinced, "Aw man, Hannibal, I never heard of any servants that _didn't_ know everything that was going on in the house."

Hannibal slowly nodded and told him, "Took the words out of my mouth…the question is if she is hiding something…_what_ is it?"

Then he heard something, and he went to the door and listened, he could hear footsteps coming down the corridor heading their way. He nodded to B.A. and they pushed the door open and went out to see who it was; he was relieved to see it was only Murdock leading the way for Face and the Wiest sisters.

"Find anything, Captain?" he asked.

"Negative, Colonel," Murdock answered, "But boy this place sure is huge. You could get lost walking around this place."

"Then why _don't_ you, fool?" B.A. asked.

"Did _you_ find anything out?" Nora asked Hannibal.

"Not much," he answered, "But I think the hired help knows more than they're letting on."

"Don't they always?" Annabelle asked.

Hannibal opened his mouth to speak but instead he caught himself and laughed at her response. "Good point."

The doors to the living room opened and the family started to pile out and join them in the dining room. Murdock felt somebody grab him by the back of his collar and he suddenly couldn't breathe; through the corner of his eye he was able to see it was Annabelle who had his neck in a death grip, he reached around and pried her fingers loose and told her as he moved her arm over to Face, "You're with him, remember?" But now that they were faced with the whole family again, he was starting to understand the sudden temptation to hide behind someone else.

Cousin Lucien came up to Hannibal and started to say something to him when suddenly the whole room went black and everybody found themselves plunged into darkness. Nobody knew what was happening, Hannibal felt two people brush against him as somebody ran past him, people were screaming and talking over each other, it sounded like somebody was being knocked down, and both B.A. and Face felt something crushing them from above.

"It's dark in here!" they heard Murdock proclaim, and even though the room was black Face looked up as he realized where the voice was coming from.

Hannibal found his metal lighter in his pocket and he flicked it on to offer _some_ light on the subject and B.A. and Face were able to look up and see Murdock was shakily standing on their shoulders and was about to touch the chandelier.

"What're you doing you crazy fool!?" B.A. asked as he shrugged his shoulder to throw Murdock off, "Get down!"

Face reached up and grabbed the side of Murdock that he was stuck with and helped him get down.

"Who turned off the lights, Hannibal?" Murdock asked.

Hannibal shrugged, "You got me." He looked around to the others and asked, "Is everybody alright?"

Somebody had knocked Nora down in the panic and Annabelle was helping her back to her feet, but other than that everybody else was still standing and seemed to be alright, albeit shaken up by the blackout. Hannibal looked around the room and asked, "Where's the fuse box?"

"I will show you, sir," the butler said.

"Wait a minute," Hannibal stopped and turned to Face, "You got a flashlight?"

"Yeah," Face reached into his jacket pocket and found one and passed it to Hannibal, who turned it on and blew out his lighter.

"That's better," he turned to the butler and nodded his head, "Lead on."

"It might not be the breaker," a female voice among them said.

"Who said that?" Face asked.

It was closer to him as it said, "I am Elizabeth Ogden, I'm the upstairs maid."

"They need a maid for every floor?" Murdock asked.

Face elbowed what he thought was Murdock and asked the woman, "Why do you say that?"

"The lights have been going out quite frequently lately, sir," she answered, "Apparently there have been problems at the power company."

"How long's that been going on?" Face asked.

"About two months sir," the maid answered.

From another corner of the room Face heard Nora whispering to Annabelle, "Ever since the old man died."

He felt somebody grab the back of his shirt and he realized it was Murdock when the familiar jacket brushed against him and he felt a hot breath on his ear as the pilot whispered to him, "You know something, Facey, this gives me an idea."

"What's that?" he whispered in return.

"Did you ever play Sardine?" Murdock asked.

Face turned to him, even though he couldn't see Murdock, and asked him, "What?"

* * *

"If your boss was so smart, how come he didn't have the main breaker put in a more convenient part of the house?" Hannibal asked the butler as he held his flashlight in one hand and checked the fuse box.

In order to reach the fuse box he'd gone through a labyrinth leading through the kitchen, taking a left down a long, narrow corridor, and down the cellar steps, only to find out the cellar was broken down into three separate rooms, and the fuse box rested in the last room at the end of the path.

Hannibal turned to the man who hadn't said a word since showing him into the room and asked, "Incidentally, what's _your_ name?"

"Giles Forsythe, sir," the butler answered.

"Oh yeah? You been working here long?"

"Five years, sir."

"Then you probably knew your employer better than the maid did."

"I should like to think so, sir."

"Alright," Hannibal said as he looked over the breakers to see if any had been thrown, "Do you think he'd really leave his fortune to those bloodsuckers he was forced to call family?"

"I really don't know, sir," Forsythe answered, "Mr. Wiest did become rather remorseful during his last days that he hadn't gotten to know certain members better."

"Did he specify who?" Hannibal asked as he found the breaker and flipped it back.

"No, sir."

Hannibal looked up, "No lights…did you turn them on when we came down here?"

"Yes, sir."

Hannibal held his flashlight up and looked to the ceiling. "Fluorescent lights," he said as he noted the long tube bulbs, "Have they been replaced recently?"

"No, sir," Forsythe answered.

"Might've burnt out then," Hannibal said as he headed back to the staircase and hollered up, "Hey are there any lights on up there?"

"Yeah Hannibal, they' on now," he heard B.A. call down.

"That's great," Hannibal said as he and Forsythe started climbing up the stairs, "Is everybody okay?"

"Almost," B.A. answered.

"Almost?" Hannibal repeated as they reached the top and he saw the sergeant standing by the door, "What does that mean?"

"That crazy fool Murdock's disappeared and so have Face and the two girls," B.A. told him, "I could hear them jibber-jabbering to themselves while we was in the dark but when the lights came on I couldn't find them anywhere."

Hannibal looked ahead to the next room and commented, "It _would_ be like Murdock to be up for a game of hide and seek in a place like this, though how he'd get the others to go with him is beyond me…did you notice if anybody else is missing?"

"I'm not sure," B.A. answered, "I don't know who all was in the room with us when the lights went out."

"Good point, well, let's go look for them."


	5. Chapter 5

Face opened the door and turned on the light. "Ah, looks like Hannibal's got the power running again," he held the door open and let Annabelle get around him and enter the sitting room.

"I'm glad for that," she said as she went over to the sofa and sat down.

"I'm just glad to be out of that closet," Face told her as he walked over and sat down beside her, "I like Murdock but I am _not_ fond of doubling up in enclosed spaces. I suggest the next time we double date we do it separately."

Annabelle giggled and commented, "Now _there's_ a colorful character."

"Murdock? Oh yeah, he's colorful alright," Face said as he crossed one leg over the other, "He's like a whole Crayola box and a firecracker, just exploding in all his colors."

"Is he always like that, though?" she asked.

"Oh, usually," Face replied, "He starts to grow on you after a while."

"Like a wart?" Annabelle smiled at him.

Face started to respond but stopped, and said, "Kind of."

"You know," she said, "I wouldn't swear to it but I think Nora likes him."

"I find it hard to believe your sister is capable of liking anybody," Face told her, "I think it'd take a few thousand volts to thaw her out."

"Well I know she comes across as being mean," Annabelle said.

"Mean I could understand," Face said, "No offense, but your sister is pure nails and bricks. You'd need a shot of nitroglycerin to get under her exterior."

"Well it's like I said before," she replied, "She's just like that because she's had to look after me all my life."

"Yes…" Face was thinking about what she'd told him before, "About that…"

A sudden breeze entered the room and he felt goosebumps forming on his wrists. It certainly was chilly in this room but he still preferred it because it was empty, it was quiet, and there were no dumb relatives, no mean sister, no Murdock butting in, just he and the nice sister alone together. He couldn't think of a better way to be with a beautiful woman.

"What about it?" Annabelle asked him.

Face came back to reality and said, "I was just thinking…you said how Nora's always had to protect you your whole life."

"Yes," she said as she leaned back against the couch, "I would imagine after this many years it's quite a tiring job for her…but in all honesty I'm not quite sure what I'd do without her. I hate that I'm so dependent on her but the truth is I am, I really don't know what I'd do if she wasn't around, she's the only person I've ever felt safe with."

"That's understandable," Face said.

"Just once though," she continued, "I wish something would happen that I could show her I'm capable of taking care of myself, that I _don't_ need to be looked after all the time."

"Well…" Face was about to make a suggestion but she cut him off.

"You know it's very strange," Annabelle told him, "When we were little we weren't raised to be afraid of everything, our mother brought us up to be like everyone else, to be bold and outgoing and to trust people…but something must be wrong with me because I've never been like that. Nora's better than I am, she can actually go out, she can be around people, she doesn't trust them but she can stand being around them, and talking to them, but I never could. I've always felt that everybody I encountered was always out to get me for something, that everyone had it in for me."

Face cupped her chin in his hand and turned her head to see him and he told her, "Not everybody," and he leaned in and kissed her. Annabelle did not resist, which struck Face as a minor surprise, and in fact it seemed to him that she warmed up to it _and_ to him rather quickly.

Then Annabelle pulled away and Face was worried that something was wrong, but she just smiled at him and said, "Maybe I'm crazy, Mr. Peck, but I think I like you."

He gave a small laugh and told her, "Well you're not crazy." Then he put his arms around her and pulled her towards him and kissed her again. However, it was short lived when he heard the door open and he pulled away from Annabelle when he saw Nora step into the room and it was plain to see the murder in her eyes.

* * *

"Murdock?" Hannibal called out as he opened the door to another empty room. He closed the door, moved onto the next one, opened it and called again, "Murdock?" He shook his head and closed the door and told B.A., "He doesn't seem to be around here anywhere."

"Just like the crazy fool," B.A. said.

"Maybe he got ahead of us and went to check out the upstairs," Hannibal suggested, "Let's go look."

"Right."

They started to cut across to the front hall when they heard a loud noise; they weren't sure what it was but it sounded like something heavy, or several things, falling down the stairs and they ran to see what had happened. They arrived just in time to see the ruckus they had heard was a suit of armor falling down the stairs and it had made a crash landing off to the side from the foot of the stairs.

"Aw man, where'd that come from?" B.A. asked as he looked up the stairs.

"Upstairs obviously, but _where_ upstairs?" Hannibal asked as he too glanced up to see if the answer awaited them there.

"Hey B.A.!" Murdock exclaimed as he seemed to appear out of nowhere and come running up behind B.A.

The sergeant turned around and yelled at Murdock, "Don't do that again you crazy fool! Where you been?"

"Well I _was_ starting to head upstairs to see where our rooms are going to be," Murdock told him, "But then _that_ thing came tumbling down so I thought it'd be a good idea to get the hell out of the way before I became an insane pancake, or maybe shish-kabob. See?" Murdock held up a large, very sharp halberd that had apparently been removed from the grip of the armor's gauntlet.

"Where'd you get that from?" Hannibal asked as he grabbed it by the handle and examined it closer.

"It was the first thing to get the express drop treatment," Murdock answered, "It fell over the banister and hit the floor while our friend the glorified sardine can was still cartwheeling down here."

"Did you see where the armor was?" Hannibal asked.

"No but it _had_ to be near the stairs, didn't it?" Murdock replied.

They didn't have long to think about that question because from somewhere else off in the house they could hear Face screaming, and they ran to find out what was the matter.

They found the sitting room and barged in just in time to see Nora knock Face over the back of the couch like he was a bowling ball, he fell on the floor with a loud thud and she was on top of him before he could even move. She had her hands wrapped around his neck and was in the process of strangling him like a chicken when she felt hands on her as well and Hannibal was screaming at her, "Get your hands off of him, what is the matter with you!?"

"What's the matter with me?" she asked as she turned around to face him, "That's a laugh, what's the matter with me? I come in here and find that _thing_ putting the moves on my little sister and you're asking what's wrong with _me_?"

Murdock helped Face up from the floor and they could see the lieutenant's shirt and jacket were messed up, his hair was also a mess and he had blood trickling down the corner of his mouth.

"Hannibal," Face said as he panted and gasped to catch his breath, "Tell me something."

"Yes, Face?" Hannibal asked.

Face licked the blood from the corner of his lip and asked, "Just _why_ did we think these women needed our help? What could _possibly_ have possessed us to think they were in need of any protection?"

Annabelle went up to her sister and told her, "Nora, you shouldn't have done that! Nothing happened!"

"No," she replied, not sounding convinced at all, "And nothing is _going_ to happen," she turned and glared at Face and added, "I'm going to see to that personally. If I catch you anywhere near my sister again I'm going to rip your tonsils out and tie them around your neck for a bowtie."

Face made a sound like a strangled laugh and said, "Too late," and pointed to his throat, "Had them out 13 years ago."

"I'll find something else of yours to rip out, trust me," Nora warned him.

Hannibal appeared indifferent, and he turned to Nora and said, "That's good, but next time save it for the family's benefit…if that doesn't convince them that you four are together, _nothing_ will."

Face let out an exasperated grunt and asked Murdock, "Why is it every time I get the daylights beaten out of me, he always sees it as a good thing?" Murdock just shrugged, and another question came to Face and he added, "Incidentally, how'd you get separated from the Tasmanian Devil?"

Murdock shrugged again and said, "What can I tell you, Faceman? It was dark out there."

"Yeah," Face looked up at the lights in the ceiling and said, "Hannibal sure picked a fine time to take us back into the 20th century, didn't he?"

* * *

Murdock recollected the halberd from the living room and showed it off to Face as he explained, "I think I'm going to take it home with me."

"Think it'll go on your wall?" Face asked, going along with it.

"Well, I had thought about another possible use for it," Murdock said as he held it straight and stood beside it, "I was thinking maybe B.A. could use it as a toothpick."

"Of course," Face said cynically.

"A toothpick?" Nora repeated quizzically.

Murdock turned on his heel and stared at her inquisitively and asked her, "Have you seen the _size_ of that angry mudsucker?"

"So now what do we do?" Annabelle asked.

"I suggest we get upstairs and see what rooms are still available," Face said, "We might not be getting any sleep tonight but at least we can find a place to park ourselves for a while."

"That might be a good idea," Nora was willing to agree, "Let's go check it out."

"Hey wait a minute!" Murdock exclaimed, stopping everybody in their tracks.

"What is it?" they all wanted to know.

Murdock left the room and came back a minute later with the upstairs maid and explained, "Might as well get a guided tour so we don't accidentally take somebody else's room."

"Well now _where's_ the fun in that?" Nora asked as they climbed the staircase behind the woman.

Elizabeth Ogden led the way and pointed to the rooms that were already taken and led them further down the hall to some that hadn't been reserved yet. In the light, Face had to admit that she had a pretty face for a working girl, and if it wasn't his cover to be engaged to Annabelle, he might be tempted to try his charms on her and see how well she reacted to them.

"Here are two of the rooms," Elizabeth said as she opened the doors and gestured inside.

"Ah," Face looked around and saw the rooms were plain and the furnishings were simple, but for one night they would do, "This looks fine." He pointed to Annabelle and himself and said, "We can take this one and…"

He stopped when he saw Murdock shaking his head and he tried to figure out what the pilot was trying to tell him. He shook his own head in like and asked, "What, that's not the plan?"

"You forget, brother," Murdock told him, "You haven't tied the knot yet…that means for tonight you're stuck bunking with _me_ again, and Nora's stuck with her sister."

"So what else is new?" Nora asked.

"Uh," Face thought of something else and asked Murdock, "What about _Dad_?"

"Who?" Murdock asked.

Face stomped on his foot and Murdock yelped and caught on, "Oh yeah, _him_…well," he glanced into the second bedroom and said, "They're double beds so we can double up."

"Well that's all good and well," Face told him, "But who sleeps with who?"

"Whom," Murdock corrected him.

"Alright, whom?" Face replied.

"Who?" Murdock asked.

"Murdock!" Face was ready to either rip his hair out or strangle the pilot.

"Uh-uh-uh," Murdock wagged a finger in his face, "That's _my_ name."

Face settled for strangling Murdock, he was starting to figure out why B.A. tried to do it so often. Nora and Annabelle pulled him off of the other man and Murdock stepped back and made an exaggerated choking noise like he was trying to breathe through a tube.

"Well if you don't want to bunk with me, you just had to say so," Murdock told him.

Once the maid left them, they went over everything in the rooms, once again checking everything for something, and the sisters had no idea what any of it was about; but the searches found the rooms were clean and they decided to go back and get Hannibal and B.A. and let them know.

"Incidentally, Face," Hannibal said to him, "Did you find out who our immediate neighbors are going to be tonight?"

Face looked annoyed at this sudden request and answered, "No, I didn't ask who's got the rooms closest to us."

"Well I doubt it'll matter much anyway," Hannibal said, "You said there are two rooms right beside each other? How many beds?"

"Two in each," Face answered.

"Single or double?"

"Doubles."

"Perfect," Hannibal told him.

"Perfect for what?" Face asked.

* * *

"Here, they fit together perfectly," Hannibal said as B.A. pushed the two double beds together.

"But I still don't see what the idea is," Annabelle said as she and Nora sat by the window and watched the men as they worked.

"You might say I'm a bit overly cautious," Hannibal explained, "We moved the beds across the room, that proves that nobody is hiding under them…_yet_, and if they do try, then _everybody_ who's going to be sleeping here tonight is going to know it because the two beds have essentially come in and if there is any movement under one it will be felt by both."

"By any chance, Mr. Smith, are you a philosopher in your spare time?" Nora asked cynically.

"Ha ha," Hannibal remarked lightly, "We've also checked the closet, _and_ the window, nobody here, nobody close by where we can see them either, and we've already swept the place for bugs, it's clean there too."

"Bugs?" Annabelle repeated, "You mean they could be watching us in this room, or listening to us?"

"They could be, but they aren't," Hannibal answered, "We've already seen to that."

"So now what?" Nora asked.

"Well now," Hannibal said, "We wait for Face and Murdock to get back and see if they managed to find out anything yet."

Nora shook her head and said, "If we ever _do_ get out of this nuthouse alive the only thing that money's going to be used for is to pay the bills for our room and board at the state loony bin."

They heard the doorknob turn and the two women stood up, Hannibal and B.A. turned to the door, already anticipating who was coming in, and their suspicions were correct. Murdock and Face entered the bedroom wearing Nora and Annabelle's bathrobes, shower caps over their hair, slippers on their feet and holding small towels from the bathroom up over their faces. They dropped the towels over the back of a chair and started undressing to reveal their real clothes underneath.

"Find out anything?" Hannibal asked.

"Yes," Face answered, "My feet were clearly _not_ made to squeeze into size 8 pumps."

Murdock shrugged out of the pink robe he was wearing and told Hannibal, "Everybody seems to be going to their rooms and getting ready to turn in for the night."

"Anybody see you?" Hannibal asked.

"That _was_ the point, wasn't it, Colonel?" he replied.

"I'm sure about half of the relatives saw us coming out of the bathroom and come to _this_ room," Face pointed, "Right where Nora and Annabelle are supposed to be for the night."

"Meaning what?" Nora asked, "If anybody tries to come in during the night they're going to have to deal with the circus freak show in order to get through to us, is that it?"

"Something like that," Hannibal gave a nod as he lit a new cigar.

"Well in that case," Nora ripped the cigar out of his hand, "Since we're supposed to be alone in this room, it's going to have to _smell_ like it too, neither of us smokes and we certainly don't smoke cheap cigars of all things."

Hannibal glared at her and repeatedly in disbelief, "_Cheap_?!"

"What do you know?" Face said to Murdock, "We finally found someone who knows how to push Hannibal's buttons."

"So what do we do now, just sit up here all night?" Annabelle asked.

"Until something happens, I'd say yes," Hannibal told her.

"Something like what?" Nora asked, as if he was making a veiled threat.

Hannibal shrugged and said innocently, "Houseful of money hungry relatives, big mansion in the middle of nowhere, no way to call out for help, _anything_ is liable to happen."

They heard footsteps out in the hall that sounded very close by, Murdock raised a finger to his lips and tiptoed over to the door and knelt down to look through the keyhole. Through the corner of his eye he could make out somebody walking past but he couldn't tell who it was, all he could deduce based on the piece he saw of what the person was wearing was it was one of the male relatives.

"See anything, Murdock?" Hannibal asked once the noise had passed.

"Not much, Colonel," Murdock answered as he stood up, "But I doubt anybody's going to try sneaking in here until the girls are asleep."

"They'll have a long wait," Nora replied smartly.

"Oh I don't know," Hannibal said as he reached for the light switch, "I think you two are going to go to sleep very soon."

"Oh no you don't," Nora grabbed his arm, "It was bad enough the first time but I'm not being left in the dark again with a room full of weird people."

B.A. leaned toward her and growled under his breath at that remark.

From somewhere outside the room they heard a low popping noise that made Murdock jump, it was almost like a gunshot. He went over to the door and listened and heard it again, it sounded like it was coming from a room across the hall.

"They're locking their doors," Murdock said, and pressed his ear closer against the door, "Chain and bolt latches, deadbolts sounds like."

"Why're they doing that?" Annabelle asked Hannibal.

"I don't know," he answered, "But if they're all locking themselves _in_ for the night, then it'll give us a chance to get out of here and look around."

"_Again_?" Nora asked.

Hannibal met her stare and explained, "There are three stories to this house, we gave the ground floor a good onceover, we barely got to check out any of the rooms up here before everybody started coming up, and we haven't even _seen_ the third floor yet." He looked to the others and added, "I'm interested in seeing what's up there."

* * *

It was decided who would go up to the third floor and who would stay at the foot of the stairs on the second floor and keep watch.

"If I scream, you come running," Nora told Face as she climbed up the stairs behind Hannibal and B.A.

"Who, me?" Face asked.

"Yes, _you_," she called down.

Face turned to Murdock and commented, "Domineering, isn't she?"

"Oh she's something alright," Murdock replied, "I'm just not sure what yet."

Face turned around and shone his light through the corner where the stairs were, and he made a small discovery.

"Hey," he slapped Murdock on the shoulder to get his attention, "There's a second set of stairs leading down to the first floor here, where do you think they go?"

"I don't know," Murdock replied, "I never saw a set of backstairs when we were checking out the rooms down there…I'll check it out."

"Famous last words," Annabelle commented.

"Be careful," Face advised him.

Murdock waved him off as he disappeared down the darkened stairwell, "Aw, Face, have you ever known me not to be oof!" the rest was cut off as they heard the crashing noise of Murdock falling down the stairs, and coming to an equally crashing stop.

"Did you get hurt, Murdock?" Face called down.

They heard his voice, a bit muffled, call back up the stairs, "No, I landed on my head."

Even in the dark, Face could see Annabelle rolling her eyes.

* * *

B.A. snorted and grumbled as dust flew up his nose and it was quickly followed by a particularly earth shattering "AAAA-CHOOOO!"

"Try it again," Nora dryly told him, "The window's still intact."

Hannibal held the flashlight in his mouth as he reached up and removed a sheet that was being used as a drop cloth and saw it was covering an antique full length mirror. He got a look at himself in it and commented over the flashlight, "Yeeck," and replaced the sheet, sending millions more dust particles through the air.

"Obviously your grandfather never bothered with a second set of upstairs servants, it doesn't look like this room's been cleaned in years," he told Nora.

"The rest of the rooms up here probably look the same way," she replied, "I _still_ don't get what you're looking for."

"I can't define it, but I'll know it when I see it," Hannibal said by way of answer, getting only a groan from Nora in response.

"Well whatever you're looking for, it can't possibly be up here," she said, "All we've found is a bunch of old furniture and trunks, and all of them locked."

"That won't interfere with my plans any," Hannibal said, "I have an expert who can get through any lock."

Nora looked back at B.A. and replied, "Let me guess, with his teeth?"

Hannibal turned the way she was looking and smirked, and answered, "No, Face, he can pick his way through any lock." He left the room and went to the top of the stairs and called down, "Hey Face, I need your help up here."

"He's not here, Hannibal," Annabelle called up.

"What?" Hannibal tried seeing down the stairwell, "What do you mean?"

"I mean," he could make out Annabelle standing at the foot of the stairs with her hands wrapped around both railings, "He's not here. He went downstairs after Murdock and he hasn't come back yet."

Hannibal turned on his flashlight and shone it down the stairs and saw she had to be telling the truth because she was standing alone.

"Come on, B.A.," Hannibal nodded his head towards the stairs, "I don't like the looks of this."


	6. Chapter 6

"What do you mean he's not here?" Hannibal asked Annabelle as they reached the foot of the stairs, "Where did they go?"

"I told you," she answered, "They went down the back stairs to the first floor and they haven't come back yet. Murdock fell down the stairs and he didn't come back, so Face went down after him to find out where he went…that was about fifteen minutes ago."

"Down these stairs?" Hannibal pointed.

"Yes."

"Alright, we're going to go down after them and see what's going on," Hannibal told the others, "Follow me."

Hannibal turned on his flashlight so they could see as they made their way down the stairs, but the room down below didn't look familiar.

"What is this place?" he asked.

"I don't know," Nora shook her head, "We didn't see it earlier."

They reached the bottom of the stairs and Hannibal shone the light around the room. The room was octagon shaped, the walls were all covered in an old shade of off-white paint, there wasn't any furniture, the walls were bare, the floor was covered with a few old rugs that were bunched up and liable to trip somebody. There were no windows and he didn't see any door either.

"It's a dead end, Hannibal," B.A. said.

"That's impossible," Annabelle said, "They both came down here, and they never came back up, so there _has_ to be a way out of this room."

"Alright then," Hannibal replied, "Let's take a look…" he told the girls, "You two pull up these rugs and see if there's a trap door, and we'll check the walls and see if any of them open up."

"Like what, a secret passageway?" Nora asked cynically.

"Why not?" Hannibal asked, "Some of the older houses _do_ have them."

"Yeah, down south maybe," Nora replied, "Underground escapes for soldiers in the Civil War perhaps, but this is California incase you forgot."

"Prohibition back rooms," Hannibal smirked, "Didn't you ever see The Roaring Twenties?"

Nora rolled her eyes and she and Annabelle grabbed one of the large rugs and pushed it back, they checked every inch of the floor but didn't find any door or any sign of anything for that matter. B.A. and Hannibal were checking every inch of the walls with a fine toothed comb; Hannibal took his gloves off and ran his fingers over the surface checking for a latch, a lever, anything that would reveal a fake wall or a hidden door. Finally he pushed against a panel and with a pronounced creak a crack formed from the ceiling down to the floor.

"Found it," he said.

The girls got up and joined him over at that side wall to see just what he had found. There wasn't any knob or door handle so Hannibal pressed his hands against the crack and carefully pushed to open the door; it creaked louder with every inch but it finally opened wide enough they could step out of the room. Using his flashlight, Hannibal shone it around the next room to see where they were _now_.

"Why it's the pantry!" Annabelle said as she saw the bags of flour and sugar and the tin cans of food lining the shelves.

"Hmmm," Hannibal turned back to the other room, "That might've been the servants' quarter once upon a time, not very comfortable but then again that isn't some employers' priority."

"But where' Face and the crazy fool now?" B.A. asked.

"I don't know, let's check," Hannibal answered.

They went into the kitchen and saw the lights were still on but they didn't see anybody there. Hannibal noticed that the back door didn't seem to be locked and he made the suggestion, "Maybe Face and Murdock went outside."

"They can't do that," Nora said.

"_You_ can't," Hannibal reminded her, "Pertaining to the clause in your grandpa's will, but _we _can because we're not part of this family and don't stand to gain or lose anything by disobeying the conditions of the will." He turned to the larger man and said, "Come on, B.A., let's go outside and take a look."

"Right, Hannibal."

He hit the outside lights and they looked around the backyard before they actually went o check it out and so far they didn't see any sign of Murdock or Face or anybody outside for that matter. So they opened the door and went outside to check it out for themselves. A short while later, they reentered the house and informed the Wiest sisters that there wasn't any sign of _anybody_ anywhere on the grounds.

"So they didn't go outside, but then where are they?" Annabelle asked.

"You haven't found anything?" Hannibal asked them.

"We haven't looked yet," Nora told him.

After a little time to think, Hannibal decided he and B.A. would go to check the basement incase they found anything down there, and while they did that the girls went to search the other rooms on the ground floor. One thing they noticed was that the lights were on, but down here there didn't seem to be anybody home, they didn't even see the servants anywhere.

"Nora, what do you think's going on?" Annabelle asked.

"I don't know, I only know that I don't like it," her sister responded.

The closet door in the dining room opened and Murdock stood in the doorway and said, "Maybe you'll like this one!"

"What're you doing in there?" Nora asked.

Face appeared behind Murdock gasping for breath, apparently he had been suffocating in the line of coats and jackets in the enclosed space, "Hiding, and also asphyxiating I think."

"What're you doing in there?" Annabelle asked.

After a couple more wheezes, Face said, "We thought we heard your cousin Roland coming and we were going to surprise him, surprise was on us, nobody came and then we heard you two."

"Why didn't you come back upstairs?" Annabelle asked.

"Well we were trying to figure out just what that room was we got stuck in and when we found the way out we decided to take advantage of it," Face explained to her.

"Have you seen anybody since you got down here?" Nora asked.

"Nobody," Murdock answered, "And I'm starting to take it personally. Is everybody in this house _too good_ to come down here and see us?"

"Murdock," Face told him, "We don't _want_ them to see us, remember?"

"No it's not that we don't want them to see us, we just don't want them offering us any coffee," Murdock replied.

"Will you STOP with the coffee!?" Nora asked, loud enough that Murdock took a step back from her.

"Nora," Annabelle said, "You better go tell Hannibal and B.A. that we found them, so they can stop looking."

"Good point," her sister agreed, and headed for the kitchen.

"Where are they?" Face asked.

"Downstairs looking for you two dodos," Nora said.

"Can I come too?" Murdock asked hopefully.

"I don't care," Nora replied as she walked away.

Murdock clapped excitedly and said, "Hurray, we're going to the basement."

"He doesn't get out much, does he?" Annabelle asked Face.

"Well…" Face tried to think how to answer that one. "So did you guys find anything upstairs?"

"I don't think so," she shook her head, "Of course I still think it would help if we had any idea just what we're supposed to be looking for."

"Good point." Face looked around and said, "You _do_ have to kind of wonder where everybody is, don't you?"

Annabelle nodded, "Everybody else went to bed, but what about the butler and the maid and the cook who were here earlier tonight? I haven't seen any of them either."

"Say," Face scratched his head, "I wonder where _their_ rooms are."

Annabelle had started to say that she didn't know, when they both heard a loud creaking noise and then heard the sudden sound of a door slamming and they realized it was the kitchen door. They went into the kitchen and Face hit the outside lights to see who had gone out but he didn't see anyone out there, he turned the knob but the door was locked. He checked the knob to see what kind of lock it was, the latch wasn't built into the knob so he tried to open it by jimmying a lock pick into the keyhole, but he was surprised to find that that had no effect on the deadbolt either.

"Whoever went out, whatever they did to the door, they certainly knew what they were doing," Face commented.

Their attention was drawn to the door in the front hall as it slammed too. They hadn't heard anybody come downstairs, nor had they heard anybody else in the house with them, so while they couldn't figure out who went out, or how they did without being noticed, they ran to the front door and tried it but found it had been locked too.

"We're locked in now…you know," Face turned to Annabelle, "I'd swear I saw this in a movie once."

"Think they did the same thing with this lock?" she asked.

Face bent down to get a better look at the lock and he told Annabelle, "This is an older lock like the one on the backdoor, see how big the keyhole is?"

She nodded, "A skeleton key would be able to fit in there."

"Yeah," Face agreed, "But if I can't even get the pick to undo the lock, there's no guarantee a key could either…also it's just my luck I never carry a skeleton key on me."

"But maybe there's one in the house," Annabelle suggested.

"Annabelle, do you have any idea how big this house is?" Face asked, "That'd be like looking for a needle in a haystack, it would be easier to just have B.A. come up and rip the door off its hinges."

"It's still worth looking around for, isn't it?" she asked.

Face wanted to argue but the wind left his sail, he always had trouble saying no to a pretty face, and Annabelle's was prettier than most. Besides, he was willing to admit the fact that they didn't have any choice; if they _didn't_ find a way to get the door open, they'd be locked in all night with no way out.

"Alright," he gave in, "We'll look."

* * *

Face was kicking himself as they tore the dining room apart, looking high and low for a skeleton key in a 3 story mansion, he had to be out of his mind. Though something else that bothered Face was he was starting to wonder what the holdup was with Hannibal and the others coming back from the basement. He looked to Annabelle, who was sorting through the contents of a drawer in the telephone desk and asked her, "Have you been down to the basement yet?"

"No," she answered, "Why?"

"Oh just wondering what's keeping them," Face answered, "I'd hate to think that halfway back here they fell through a trapdoor leading into the sixth dimension and are running up and down the staircase maze of the Escher Relativity room or something."

Annabelle smiled and said as she resumed searching for the key, "I don't know what they're doing down there, but maybe we ought to go down after them. Maybe they can help us find the key."

"You're underestimating them," Face told her, "They can do plenty more than that."

"Well then?" she asked, "What're we waiting for?"

Face shrugged, "Good point, let's go."

Returning to the kitchen they found the way leading to the basement door and they headed down the stairs and called out to the others, but there was no response. They entered the first room of the basement and saw it wasn't particularly large, especially considering it was the room storing the water heater, the water softener, and the furnace, along with a bunch of boxes piled up on the opposite side from where they stood.

"Hannibal!" Face called out, and when there wasn't any answer he tried again, "B.A.! Murdock!"

Nothing. He and Annabelle looked at each other and weren't sure what to make of it. Hand in hand they went over to the second room and stepped inside to look around. They stepped down two large steps and saw this room had the design and appearance of a wine cellar, though there weren't any bottles in the rack on the wall. It was cold down in the basement and Annabelle shivered and told Face, "I don't like it down here."

"I know, neither do I," Face told her as he looked over to the other doorway, "Let's see if they're in there."

They walked over to the other end of the room and gazed into the third room where the fuse box was kept. This room had a concrete floor and bricked walls that were raised up, and then left off in a shelf space of some kind, and the top was lined with other boxes that stood just a few inches away from the ceiling.

"I get the impression ol' Grandpa was something of a packrat," Face told Annabelle, "It doesn't look like the old man threw anything away considering he lived here alone."

Annabelle tightened her grip on Face's hand and said, "They're not here, Face, how could they have gone upstairs without us hearing them?"

He shook his head, just as confused as she was, "I don't know, but you can be sure this is another one of Hannibal's bright ideas."

"How can you be sure?" Annabelle asked.

"Because," Face said, from too many years of experience, "When _nothing_ is going the way it's supposed to, that's always how you know it's one of Hannibal's plans at work."

"I don't get it," she said.

"You will once you spend enough time around him," Face assured her, "Come on."

They were halfway up the stairs when they heard a noise from above that made them both stop.

"What's that sound?" Annabelle asked.

Face looked up and strained to hear it better, then he realized, "That's the piano in the dining room, Murdock must be up there, he's the only guy screwy enough to play at a time like this."

They ran up the rest of the stairs and cut through the kitchen into the dining room, but their hopes were deflated when they saw there wasn't anybody in the room, and now that they were here, the music had stopped.

"There _was_ somebody here, wasn't there?" Annabelle turned to Face.

He was dead certain, "There _had_ to be, this is _not_ the self-playing variety of pianos." He walked over to the piano and murmured under his breath, "Just had to be…" He sat down on the bench and hit the keys, trying to match the music that he had heard playing just a moment before. That was one of his hidden talents, he was fairly good at playing the piano, but the opportunity to show this off seldom came up. He looked at the sheet music to see if it matched the song that he had heard playing, but he couldn't tell, all the pages were punched together all over the piano's built in wooden stand to hold the music on. Face grabbed all the loose sheets and tried to figure out what order they went in, and while he was sorting through them he realized that several pieces of paper were _not_ sheet music.

"Hmm," he said as he looked over the print on them.

Annabelle came up behind him and asked, "What is it?"

"Well…" Face said as he figured out what order the papers went in, "I'm not _sure_, but this looks like a copy of a will." He turned and looked to Annabelle, "Your grandfather's will."

"What?" she went over to him, "What does it say?"

"Well it _does_ say that all surviving relatives would have to stay in the house for the night for it to be determined who would get what. I can't find the part explaining how that works though…wait a minute…"

"What now?" Annabelle asked.

Face became quiet and he looked up at Annabelle and told her, "Well if I'm reading this right…your grandfather left all his money somewhere in the house to be found tomorrow morning when the sun comes up and everybody's accounted for."

She looked at him stunned, "What? Are you serious?"

"Well I think so," Face looked at the papers again, "It says something about finding a set of…" that part of the print had been smudged and he tried to decipher it, "Blue prints, or floor plans, or something…Annabelle, I don't know how sane your grandpa was but I think he hid his money somewhere in the house."

Annabelle tried to figure out what this meant and she said to Face, "Isn't his lawyer supposed to have those papers then so nobody else would find out about it?"

"It _would_ make more sense than leaving them here on the piano," Face said, "What room is he staying in tonight?"

"I don't know," she confessed, "I didn't notice."

"Well," Face looked to the ceiling, "He's got to be around here somewhere, let's go drag him out of bed and make him talk."

"How're you going to do that?" she asked as she followed after him.

"There are ways, my dear," Face assured her, "Especially when the person performing the inquisition has spent a good amount of time in the jungles of Vietnam, where torture exists in a language unknown to civilization."

Annabelle wasn't sure what to make of that and she asked him, "What're you going to do to him?"

"Well if I play my cards right," Face said as he waved the papers over his head, "I shouldn't have to actually _do_ much of anything to him, I think we'll just sit down like a couple of gentlemen and have a nice little talk."

They got out into the front hall and Face had gotten up the first six steps when he saw a bright light from above. One of the doors was opened upstairs and the light was shining out of the room and cast a blinding glare on the whole view of the second floor from where he stood at the foot of the staircase. Then a second light came on and blinded him; he squeezed his eyes shut and turned around, making only a wild guess but determining that the sudden light shone on him was from somebody's flashlight. A gun went off from the top of the stairs and Face fell facedown sprawled over the bottom steps.

Annabelle screamed when the shot rang out and she saw Face fall, and when she realized that he wasn't moving she became petrified with fear and screamed without stopping; eventually her screams gave way to hysterical sobs as the flashlight went off and the light at the top of the stairs slowly closed off as the doorway it originated from was closed. Annabelle sank to the floor with her hands over her mouth but little good it did to muffle her cries as she gazed upon Face's lifeless body crumpled over the stairs.

Annabelle was only half aware of hearing voices coming from somewhere off in the house, until she recognized them.

"_Where did it come from?"_ That was Hannibal's voice.

"_Sounded like it came from the front hall."_ That was Murdock.

The lights came on and Annabelle saw her sister and the three other members of the A-Team coming into the hall, all of them demanding to know what had happened. Still hysterical beyond most coherent words, she pointed to the stairs and screamed, "Look!"

"Face!" Murdock screamed when he recognized the shape on the stairs.

"Oh my God," Nora groaned as she took in the same sight.

"What happened?" Hannibal asked as he went over to take a look at him.

"I don't know!" Annabelle cried as she stood up, "Somebody shot him."

"Somebody, who?!" Murdock asked.

"I don't know," Annabelle looked to the floor, "A light came on upstairs and blinded us, somebody shot down at him and he fell."

Annabelle was about to sink straight to the floor again but Murdock grabbed her and kept her up on her feet.

Hannibal looked over the back of Face's clothes and asked, "Was he going upstairs or coming down when the shot was fired?"

"He had started to go up," Annabelle rubbed her eye, "When the light came on he turned around and started to run, that's when he got shot."

Hannibal gazed over the back of Face's jacket and pants again, then ran his fingers through the hair on the back of Face's head, he turned the man over and that was when Face opened his eyes.

"Think I'll get an Academy Award for this performance?" he quietly joked.

"Face!"

"He's alive!" Murdock exclaimed in disbelief.

"Great, now I can kill him for making us worry," B.A. added.

"Are you alright, kid?" Hannibal asked as he helped Face up.

"Yeah," Face nodded, "Just a little banged up from the fall."

"What happened?" Hannibal asked.

"Somebody tried to shoot me," Face answered matter-of-factly, "But I dropped _right_ before the gun went off…I believe the bullet's buried itself somewhere in the floor."

Hannibal looked to Annabelle and asked her, "What room did the light come from?"

"I don't know!" Annabelle shook her head.

"Hannibal," Face pointed upstairs, "There's only one room that directly faces the head of the stairs, I don't know whose room that is but it has to be the one."

"Fine, let's go see who it is," Hannibal said as he started up the stairs.

"Wait for us!" Murdock said as he jumped over the railing and stormed up the steps behind the colonel, "We want in on the beatdown too!"

They reached the top of the stairs and Hannibal kicked the door open with his gun drawn and with his free hand he turned on the lights. It was a modestly furnished bedroom with a bed that hadn't been slept in yet tonight, and no occupant to be seen anywhere.

"They had to be in here," Annabelle told Hannibal, "They couldn't have run away."

"No?" he asked her, sounding like he wasn't sure he believed it.

She shook her head, "I never heard anybody run, the door closed and the light was shut out as it did, if they _did_ leave, wouldn't I have seen their shadow as they pulled the door shut from the outside?"

"That's a good point, Colonel," Murdock told him as he walked around the room a bit, "Maybe what they did is…hey!" he tripped on something and about hit the floor. He kicked the lump in the throw rug and saw it had been bunched up to cover a gun lying on the floor.

Hannibal picked up the gun and with a quick test of the olfactory senses, commented, "It's recently been fired, I'd say within just the last few minutes."

"Which only proves that somebody tried to shoot me," Face said flatly, "_I_ could've told you that, Hannibal, in fact I _did_ tell you that."

Nora pushed past Face and Murdock to see the revolver Hannibal was holding and her eyes grew wide and she exclaimed in disbelief, "That's _my_ gun."

All eyes were suddenly on her, even Hannibal was staring at her as if she had a bull's eye painted on her.

"Your gun?" he repeated, slowly, firmly, his tone similar to that of a commanding officer about to bust one of his men down to bottom rank.

Nora glared at him, unmoving, she stood her ground and replied in an equally firm tone, "Yes, _my_ gun."

Hannibal exhaled a slow puff of smoke from his cigar and said to Nora, "I think you better start explaining yourself."


	7. Chapter 7

"What do you mean your gun?" Hannibal asked Nora.

She glared at him defiantly and said, "Do you really think I'd be stupid enough to come to this tomb without some form of protection? I knew what we would be facing tonight, miles from civilization, miles from anybody who could help, stuck in a house with all those _horrible_ people. They'd do anything to get that money, and I wouldn't put it past them trying to kill us just so they can get a bigger share."

"Alright," Hannibal nodded slowly, "That answers that question…now for the next one, what is your gun doing here in _this_ room?"

"How should I know?" she replied.

"Well," he said, "You have one thing in your favor, in that you were with us when Face was shot at."

"Of course!" she replied venomously, "Somebody stole my gun earlier tonight."

"When?" they wanted to know.

"When the lights went out," she answered, "When everybody was fumbling around in the dark I felt somebody remove it from my pocket when they knocked me down."

"Why didn't you tell us that when it happened?" Face asked.

"Because," she said, as if Face was an idiot who couldn't understand the simplest concept, "If I'd announced to the whole family that my gun was gone, then _everybody_ would know we were a couple of sitting ducks. At least if whoever stole it has kept his mouth shut, then everybody else either doesn't know, or can only guess."

"Assuming they even thought you _were_ carrying a gun," Murdock said.

"Wait a minute," Face went over to Hannibal and said, "You said Nora was with you when the gun went off, _where_ were you? We went down to the basement and tore the whole place apart, we never saw anybody down there."

"You didn't look hard enough," B.A. told him.

"In the third room behind those boxes up on the wall is a narrow pathway leading up to a set of storm cellar doors," Hannibal explained, "We decided to see what the door led to and found our way outside. We checked out the grounds and from there we also found that both the doors were locked…now, we _could_ have just had B.A. break them down but decided against that, so we crawled back in through the cellar passage and came back up from the basement."

"Speaking of which," Murdock said, "Who locked us out?"

"I was hoping you could tell us," Annabelle told them, "We were downstairs when it happened, but we didn't see anybody go out, and we can't get the doors unlocked, Face already tried."

"Yeah, if you can believe it or not," Face explained, "Somebody's finally found a Peck-proof lock."

"What?" Murdock asked.

Face shook his head, "None of my lock picks work…it seems that the only way to get the locks open is with a key."

"And we figured since it's an older house and the locks are older, there might be a skeleton key around somewhere that could get them open."

"But before we could find that," Face showed Hannibal the pieces of paper that he'd pocketed in his jacket earlier, "I found the copy of the grandpa's will on the piano…and in it he explains that the $20 million is somewhere _in_ this house."

"What?!" was the general consensus of everybody else in the room.

"That's right," Face told Hannibal, "We were coming up here to find that lawyer Rogers and that's when somebody up here took a potshot at me."

"Think there's a connection, Colonel?" Murdock asked.

"Could be," Hannibal replied, but while he was thinking that over, another thought occurred to Murdock.

"We heard the shot when we were coming up from the basement…so how could all the relatives be in the rooms down the hall and not hear it coming from the same floor?"

This was a question that hadn't occurred to the others and they all looked at each other in confusion.

"They had to be in on it," Annabelle said.

"One of them at least," Nora added, "I say it's time we wake everybody up."

"Sounds like a plan to me," Hannibal said, "Alright everybody, move out."

They stormed out of the room and down the hall, doors were kicked open on all sides and all the family members were dragged out of bed and told to gather downstairs in the living room within 10 minutes. The A-Team and the Wiest sisters made their way down the stairs and also took the courtesy to kick in any closed doors down there as well, to give the same warning to the servants, but that was a search that came back empty.

"They're not here!" Annabelle told them, "They're gone!"

"They must've been the ones that ran out of the house and locked us in," Face realized, "But why?"

"Maybe they _weren't_ part of the will after all," Nora said.

"But what about the lawyer then?" Annabelle asked, "Where did _he_ go?"

Hannibal signaled for them to be quiet as the rest of the Wiest family joined them in the living room, all of them dressed and fully awake and looking very inconvenienced by their rude wakeup call.

"What is going on?" Cousin Lucien demanded to know.

"That'll be explained in a minute," Hannibal said, "Everybody stay right where you are."

They stood just inside the doorway and Murdock went behind them one by one, snapping his fingers in their ears or whistling sharply or clapping his hands or singing a low tune, getting confused and irritated responses from all of them; and when he came to the two eldest cousins, Lucien and Leopold he stood behind them and screamed, "Ya-ha! Look alive! At-ten-tion!" causing both men to stagger and stammer until finally, on a reflex, they both stood straight and saluting.

"At ease, that is all," Murdock told them.

"Mr. Smith, _what_ is the meaning of all this?" Cousin Charles wanted to know.

"You tell me," Hannibal said, and addressing the whole Wiest clan he said, "I find it very interesting that for all of you having very good hearing, that you conveniently all went deaf in your rooms and couldn't hear the gunfire ringing out right next door to you."

Everybody looked to one another questioningly and Roland smugly asked, "What are you talking about?"

"Simply this," Hannibal explained, "_Somebody_ was at the top of the stairs 20 minutes ago, fired a gun and tried to kill Templeton, as you can see, they missed, but that does leave the question of _who_ pulled the trigger."

"Surely you're not blaming us," Jane commented, looking completely put out by this interrogation.

"I'm blaming _somebody_ for the attempted murder," Hannibal said, "However it appears that my suspect list is incomplete, look among you and tell me who is not here."

Everybody looked to one another and looked around the room, but they were coming up empty for an answer.

"I seem to recall that when we first came here tonight," Hannibal told them, "This house was full of Mr. Wiest's paid servants: the butler, the cook, an upstairs maid and a downstairs maid. Tonight when we got everybody up, we dragged _everybody_ out of bed, but the servants are no longer here."

Everybody started voicing their confusion as they looked around and realized that he was telling the truth.

"What more," Hannibal continued, "Whoever has left this house has made sure that nobody else will be following suit, we have been locked in."

Jane's eyes bugged out and she said, "You mean we really have to stay in this house all night?"

"What's the matter?" Face asked her, "Isn't that what you had planned anyway?" Jane became quiet and turned her back to him, but Face added, "That was the rule, anybody who wanted the money would have to stay here all night, they couldn't leave the house for any reason."

"There's somebody else who was here earlier tonight who isn't with us now," Hannibal said, "Any guesses?"

Everybody looked around the room at one another, and this time it was Kyle, one of the grandsons, who noted, "Grandpa's lawyer's not here."

"Correct," Hannibal said, "However, he left his paperwork behind. So that leads me to believe that he was working with somebody _in_ the house, in order for him to leave all the documents behind. Though I don't suppose anybody's going to want to own up to that one, are they?" The silence was answer enough. "I thought not."

"What does the will say?" Nellie Wiest inquired.

"Sorry," Hannibal gave a small smirk, "That's privileged information…if anybody here knows anything or had anything to do with Rogers' departure, then they _know_ what the will states…in which case, he or she is going to become very anxious to get their hands on ol' Grandpa's money, by any means necessary."

"What are you implying?" Henry Fulton Wiest asked Hannibal.

"Exactly what it sounds like I'm implying," he answered, "Now…we don't know who it was that tried to shoot my boy, so I want everybody to empty their pockets right now, and you better hope I don't find a gun that's recently been fired."

Several of the relatives took offense to Hannibal's accusation, but they complied, and Roland, Jonathan, Henry and Charles all placed their pistols and revolvers on the table, which Murdock gleefully went around and collected up and handed over to B.A. for safekeeping.

"Well," Hannibal said after a quick check, "None of these have been used tonight, however, until tomorrow I think it would be a good idea to put them out of everybody's reach."

"Wait a minute," Roland pointed his finger accusingly to Annabelle and Nora, "What about them?"

"What about them what?" Face asked.

"They didn't empty their pockets," he said, "How do you know one of them isn't carrying a gun?"

"Well now don't be silly, Roland," Face told him, "If they had a gun, why would they have let you chase them through the streets instead of just shooting you like you deserve?"

Roland glared at him and asked, "Is that a threat?"

"I just call the garbage like I see it," Face said, "In any case, there are three women over there that turned up empty for guns, why shouldn't these two too?"

"I want to see them turn out their pockets," Roland said, "Let them _prove_ they're not carrying anything."

Hannibal turned to the girls and said, "Tough crowd…would you mind indulging your cousin?"

Nora pulled out the pockets on her jeans and in her jacket, then took her jacket off and shook it to reveal nothing hidden inside either. Annabelle likewise pulled out the pockets on the sides of her dress, also coming up empty.

"You see?" Face asked, "I told you they didn't have anything."

"How could you know they didn't?" Roland asked in return.

"Why did you think they _did_?" Murdock asked him.

It seemed that they almost had Roland, one slip of the tongue and they would've had proof that he _knew_ Nora had a gun, but Hannibal knew that wouldn't prove anything because if Roland had been the one to steal the gun, he would've known Nora didn't have it on her. Or would he? He could've dropped the gun in the empty room, returned to his own and listened to them come up and assumed she'd recollected her gun, so that would also explain his behavior. But as it was, Roland let go of the argument and didn't say anything further on the subject.

"Alright," Hannibal said, "So the gun used is still missing." He was laying the trap and just waiting for somebody to take the bait. "No matter, I'm sure that it will turn up before the night is over."

"But then who tried to kill him?" Nora asked.

"That's what I intend to find out," Hannibal answered, "Now, can anybody say with full certainty if there is or isn't anybody else in this house other than all of us in this room right now?"

"No," she said.

"Alright then," Hannibal said, "One of us will stay here with the rest of the extended family, and the rest of us are going to search this house from top to bottom and see if there's anybody here unaccounted for."

"Right," Murdock cheerfully agreed and started to march off.

"Hold it," Hannibal said, "I don't want to take a chance of us all winding up in the dark again, everybody take a flashlight with you."

"Good point," Face replied.

Fortunately he and Murdock each had their own. Hannibal tossed his to B.A. and Nora asked, "What about you?"

"Oh I wouldn't worry about that," Hannibal said as he took something out of his pocket.

"What's that?" Nora asked as she looked at the thing he was holding that looked like a cross between a small coffee pot and a lawn sprinkler.

Hannibal held the brass item up and showed everybody, "I found this down in the basement, it's an old blowtorch and it _still_ works, _and_, if the lights _do_ go out, I'll barbecue the first person who tries to escape."

"A Marx Brother flashlight, the man's a genius," Nora commented, then to Hannibal she added, "But don't let it go to your head."

Hannibal chuckled as he took out a cigar and used the blowtorch to light it, and he asked the relatives, "So…anybody want to smoke?"

* * *

"Search this house from top to bottom he said," Face grumbled as they checked every possible hiding place in every room on the second floor, "See if there's anybody unaccounted for, he said."

"You going to be a parrot all night or are you coming to a point?" Nora asked.

"His head already comes to a point," Murdock told her, "See he hit it a while back when he ran face first into a tree."

"Now _why_ did he do that?" Annabelle asked.

"Because he was trying to go in the opposite direction of the people shooting at him," Murdock explained.

Face felt his complexion turning a nice shade of red and he turned to the pilot and said, "Murdock, would you mind helping me look around this place instead of telling my life story?"

"Aw but that's the more fun of the two," he replied.

Nora kicked the closet door open and stepped in with her gun drawn, which she had collected off of Murdock when they came upstairs, and checked both sides of it. "Nobody in here."

"Or down here," Annabelle added as she pulled up the bedspread and checked under the metal frame.

"Figures," Face whined, "Just like Hannibal, always playing games."

"What do you mean?" Annabelle asked as she stood up and straightened out the skirt of her dress.

"Well we're all up here playing hide and seek and he's downstairs with the rest of the family playing Simon Says, if anybody gets out he's also going to be playing Joan of Arc and set them on fire."

"Well, it's a plan, isn't it?" she asked.

"Exactly, and that is Hannibal," Murdock told her, "He's the man with the plan, he's a real…"

"Murdock," Face cut him off, "Alright, nobody's here, now we check the next room."

"This is getting ridiculous," Nora grunted.

"And just plain monotonous," Murdock added as they started to leave the room in single file. Murdock was the last one out and as he started to leave the room, he turned and saw the mirror on top of the dresser and he let out a scream of terror. Face ran back into the room with his gun drawn and asked, "What is it?"

"Faceman, look in the mirror, what do you see?" Murdock quivered.

Face looked ahead at the rectangular mirror and shrugged, "My reflection."

Murdock let out a sigh of relief and said, "Thank heavens, I thought it was _mine_!" and he laughed as he got chased the whole way out of the room and down the hall.

Nora shook her head and said to her sister, "Five million guys driving along the road, and we gotta get picked up by this bunch of nuts."

"Well it could be worse," Annabelle replied as she followed her big sister down the hall.

"Sure!" Nora responded sarcastically, "They could've been leading a convoy! That'd be all we need, a whole damn _army_ of people like this."

Annabelle shrugged and said as she ran to keep up with Nora, "You say that like it's a bad thing!"

Nora hadn't been paying attention to how close they were to Face and Murdock and she walked right into Face and Annabelle walked right into her, and they all fell forward and knocked into Murdock.

"Sunday driver!" Murdock called from where he was being smashed under the other three.

One by one they got up off of him and Face pulled him back to his feet.

"You okay, Murdock?"

"I'm fine," Murdock said, "Fine as an aged dandelion wine…"

"Murdock, don't start on that again," Face said, "Remember what happened last time?" Then he turned around and said, "Well I give up! We've been over every room of this house and there's _nobody_ here!"

"Then why did the servants and the blood sucking leech leave?" Nora asked.

"I don't know," Face shook his head, "But I'm convinced, there's nobody else in this house."

Gears were starting to turn in Nora's head and she asked Face, "Do we let anybody else know that, or leave them in the dark?"

"What do you mean?" Face asked.

"Well _we_ know there's nobody else in the house with us, but I say we let everybody downstairs think there _is_."

Face was trying to make some sense of that idea but he felt that a large crucial piece of the puzzle was missing. "You got a specific somebody in mind or is it a general thing?"

Annabelle caught on quicker than Face did, he guessed it was some kind of sibling bond or something. But the two sisters looked at each other and without exchanging a single word, both seemed to draw the same conclusion and they both turned their attention to the pilot. Norma called out in a singsong tone, "Oh Murdock."

"Uh-oh," he said with a grin, "What is it?"

* * *

B.A. was the first one to return downstairs, Hannibal noted that the sergeant looked even less enthusiastic than he normally did. "Any luck, B.A.?"

"Nothing, man," he answered, "If there is anybody else in this house, then they' the invisible man."

Hannibal heard more footsteps retreating down the stairs and he saw the others come in behind B.A. "And you?"

"Well we didn't find anybody hiding in the shower if that's what you asking," Face said, "But I _did_ come across a little piece of good luck." He reached into his pocket and pulled out an old skeleton key.

"Good work, Face, where'd you find it?"

"Uh…" Face started to point at the ceiling and then said, "I don't know _whose_ room it is but I'm guessing it might've been Grandpa's."

"Great, now we can get the doors open and see what's going on outside," Hannibal said.

"I hope!" Face groaned as they went to the door.

Hannibal tried the key and to everybody's relief they found that it worked. He hadn't realized until now just how large the front door was, but as he tried to open it and found that it wouldn't budge because the wood was warped, he realized he might as well be trying to lower the drawbridge to a medieval castle. Face and B.A. helped him pull and with a little difficulty the bottom of the door finally gave way from its frame and threw itself open and subsequently threw them down like a set of bowling pins.

"If this keeps up, I may get a strike," Face noted as he picked himself up.

Hannibal threw on the porch light to see out, and he could see, and hear, that it was raining. Already there was a nice flowing river building up and running down the sidewalk. He thought it was odd that they hadn't heard the rain before but he supposed with money like Wiest's, a guy could have a house built soundproofed. He took his flashlight and headed down the steps, being careful not to slip in the puddles or the mud, and he went around to where the cars were parked and took note of how many were there. After taking a moment to notice everything, he went back up to the porch and headed inside, half soaked through, and he told them, "All of our cars are where we left them out there, but there's one car missing from the garage."

"Then they really did leave," Jane said in disbelief.

"Did anybody here know the servants at all?" Hannibal looked to the rest of the family.

A few of the older members murmured that they knew a bit about the help, and Hannibal said to them, "Alright, why would they leave and lock us all in? What could possibly be their motive for doing something like that?"

Nobody had any answers for the question, so Hannibal tried another approach.

"Did any of you know Mr. Wiest's lawyer, had you ever met him before tonight _or_ before he contacted you about the inheritance?"

And again there was a round of 'no's from everyone in the house.

"Well this is getting us nowhere in a hurry," Hannibal said.

Whatever he planned to say next was cut off when he heard what they all heard. Footsteps coming from the floor above, the ceiling shook slightly with every step the person upstairs made.

"I thought you said there wasn't anybody else in this house," Hannibal told Face.

"There isn't!" Face exclaimed, "At least we didn't find anybody!"

"Well there's someone up there now," Hannibal said, "Come on, let's take a look."

"If you don't mind," Roland came up behind Hannibal and got in his face, "I think we'll follow to make sure this isn't a trick you and your little friends cooked up."

"Not at all," Hannibal stepped aside to let Roland go up first, "After you."

"Ladies first," Face added.

"B.A.," Hannibal said, "You stay down here incase somebody tries to make a break for it."

"Right, Hannibal," B.A. replied, "Ain't nobody gonna get by me. I'm gonna see to that personally."

One by one, everybody else slipped upstairs and B.A. kept his eyes on the stairs and kept his ears open for any sudden noise. He could hear the muffled sound of Hannibal talking but nothing sounded urgent.

B.A. couldn't explain it but he had the strangest feeling that he wasn't completely alone down there. He knew that everybody had gone upstairs, what more he knew that whoever they'd heard stomping around up there was _also_ upstairs…or was he? B.A. remembered the second stairway leading down to the room behind the pantry and he turned to look towards the kitchen. He didn't see anything from there, and tried to keep his attention on the front stairs. But he couldn't shake the feeling that there was somebody down there with him, he just couldn't figure out _where_.

B.A turned around quick, he thought if he moved fast enough he'd be able to see whoever was down there with him staring at him, but he saw nothing. He turned around again, and still didn't see anybody. He was starting to think that he was getting paranoid…maybe that blood transfusion he got from Murdock was _finally_ starting to make _him _crazy too. But then, B.A. felt the gap in the air being closed between him and another person, he could feel somebody's breath on his back, he spun around and came face to face with…he didn't know what. Whoever or whatever it was that stood before him was wearing a black cloak and hat and had long black haggy hair and fangs sticking out of its mouth and long sharp nails on its hands and it seemed to be hissing at him and moving as if to strike him. But he beat it to the punch and in fact punched the thing right in the face and with a groan of pain and a short 'oomph' it fell back and hit the floor. It was only when it was on its back and its limbs flung out to all sides and its hair fell back, that B.A. realized that it was Murdock!

"B.A.! What's going on?" Hannibal called as they came rushing down the stairs and into the living room.

He, Face, Annabelle and Nora were the first ones into the room and when they saw Murdock lying on the floor out cold, they all looked at B.A. and demanded to know what happened. Unfortunately, he didn't even know what happened himself.

"Aw man," he grumbled as he realized what he'd done.


	8. Chapter 8

"Come on, Murdock, wake up," B.A. said as he tapped Murdock's cheek, after he'd made sure to remove the rings from his hand so he didn't hurt the man anymore than he already had.

"What'd you have to go and hit him for?" Nora asked in a scolding tone.

"Yeah, B.A., what happened?" Hannibal asked, albeit in a less judgmental manner than the women were.

"Aw Hannibal, this fool came up behind me wearing that crazy disguise, I didn't know who it was," B.A. said, "I see this thing hissing at me like a snake and trying to stick his claws in me, why didn't he say it was him?"

"Fair point," Hannibal replied, "I just hope you didn't break anything."

"You're not going to get anywhere slapping him silly like that," Nora said as she picked up a vase off an inn table, "This ought to wake him up," and she dumped the water, and flowers, over Murdock's face and in the process also soaked Hannibal as well.

Murdock sputtered and tried to get up. B.A. grabbed him by the arm and pulled him up so he was sitting on the floor instead of sprawling on it like a corpse.

"Hey Murdock," he said, "What's the idea of scaring me like that?"

Murdock spit out water like a fish and hit his ear to get the water out, and he looked at B.A. and said, sounding hopeful, "_Did_ I scare you, B.A.? Did I really scare you?"

The look of concern transformed into an immediate scowl as B.A. told him, "No!"

Murdock was grinning with glee as he said, "Yes I did! I scared you! It worked!"

"What worked?" Hannibal asked.

"My disguise!" Murdock said as he started to get up, "The big guy didn't have any idea who I was, did he?"

"Why else would he knock your lights out?" Face asked him.

"Yeah Murdock, you scared him alright," Nora added, "When he thought he'd killed you _then_ he was scared."

Hannibal picked up the hat and wig and phony claws and fangs they'd collected off of Murdock when they found him and he held them up and asked the pilot, "The Cat and the Canary, Murdock?"

"Uh no, Colonel," he replied, "Dr. Jack."

"Doctor Jack?" Hannibal repeated the name a few times as if he was trying to place it, and then finally he said, "Oh yes, I get it." He chuckled, "Planned to liven up the party by scaring the daylights out of the family, eh?"

"Something like that," Murdock answered, "I figured I'd try it with B.A. first since he's the hardest to scare with anything…except flying that is."

"Well, I'd say it worked," Annabelle commented.

Nora grabbed Murdock by his wrist and said, "Come on, let's see if there's any ice in the freezer we can put on your face."

"Can you believe that crazy fool, Hannibal?" B.A. asked.

"Well…" Hannibal said diplomatically, "He _did_ have a good idea…_however_," he turned to Annabelle, "I have a feeling he didn't come up with it all on his own. Would you happen to know anything about it?"

"It was Nora's idea," she said, "Well actually I guess it was both our idea…she said we ought to let everyone else think that there _was_ somebody else in the house, thought it might work to our advantage."

"Where'd he get the costume from?" Hannibal asked.

"We found the cloak and hat in one of the closets…and the wig was in one of those trunks upstairs on the third floor…_he_ had the fangs and those long claws in his pocket, he said it was for a costume he was working on, but I didn't get what that would be for."

"Well you have to know Murdock to get that kind of stuff," Hannibal said, "So he was the one clodhopping around up there and when we went up, he came down the backstairs, is that it?"

"Pretty much," Annabelle admitted, "He and Face had figured that somebody would stay down here and that's when he would come in and scare them."

"It's a pretty good plan," Hannibal had to confess, "But it was almost blown when B.A. knocked him out. It's just a good thing that we were able to get him out of that getup before the rest of the family saw him."

"Uh-oh," B.A. said, and Annabelle noted the intense gaze in Hannibal's eyes, "Hannibal's getting a plan."

Hannibal turned to the others and said, "Nobody else knows that it was B.A. that hit Murdock, and they still _don't_ know what happened."

"So what?" Annabelle asked.

"So," Hannibal said, "Murdock's boogeyman has not had his cover blown yet, so I think he could make a comeback tonight."

"What do you have in mind, Hannibal?" Face wanted to know.

* * *

Nora lifted the icepack off Murdock's face and saw the bruise that was starting to form and she grimaced, "He sure hit you hard, didn't he?"

"Oh he didn't hit me," Murdock told her, "If he'd hit me he would've killed me…this," he gestured with his free hand, "Is just the mudsucker's equivalency to swatting a mosquito."

"Funny," Nora replied, "A guy like that looks like he'd swat mosquitoes with a bazooka."

Murdock started to laugh but it was obvious it was hurting him to try. He was quiet for a minute and then his eyebrows shot up and he went, "Hmmmm."

"What is it?" Nora asked.

Murdock turned to her and said, "I wonder who it was that knocked that suit of armor over the stairs earlier."

"Huh?"

He filled her in on what had happened earlier that night when the armor fell from the head of the stairs, when all the relatives were gathered in the living room.

"Well," Nora said, "That leaves only the butler, the cook, one of the two maids, or the lawyer."

"No," Murdock shook his head, "Rogers was in the living room with everybody else when it happened, so that just leaves the servants."

"Unless there really _is_ somebody else in this house," Nora thought.

"Well…" Murdock conceded, "Anything's possible. Especially since we know a way someone else could've gotten inside without being seen."

"The storm cellar."

"That's right."

Nora nodded as she put it together, "They come up the basement steps, go into the room behind the pantry, take the back stairs up to the second floor…"

"And send the suit of armor crashing down the stairs," Murdock said, "Why?"

Nora shrugged and suggested, "To kill you?"

"But why me?" Murdock asked, "I don't know anybody here."

"Okay…maybe whoever it was didn't know it was you and was just trying to kill anybody who happened to be coming up the stairs at that time. But where _is_ the suit of armor?"

"Still out in the hallway…I think," Murdock told her.

"Of course then I suppose it's a matter of who could lift that thing," Nora thought.

"I think it's a safe bet that both maids are out for that one," Murdock said, "That thing is _heavy_."

"Unless it was already near the head of the stairs and they just needed to give him one good push," she reminded him.

"That's possible," Murdock agreed.

Nora shook her head and said, "The whole thing's crazy to me, I hope morning comes soon because if I don't get out of this house I'm going to go out of my mind."

"Hey," Murdock looked like a light bulb went off over his head, "That's it!"

"That's what?" she asked.

"Maybe whoever's doing all this stuff is hoping to drive you crazy, and then that way you get cut out of the inheritance," Murdock told her.

"But Face didn't say anything about the will mentioning anything like that," she reminded him.

"Well he didn't tell us what all it _did_ say," Murdock replied, "We'll have to see if he got the whole copy or if part of it's missing…because I'll just bet you that's exactly what's going on."

"Only logical explanation for the whole thing?" Nora asked him.

Murdock looked at her like _she_ was crazy and asked, "Who said anything about logic?" He nodded his head towards the door and said, "Come on."

They rejoined the others in the living room and Murdock asked Face, "Do you still have the will?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Does it have any clause in there about certain heirs being disinherited if they would prove to be insane?" Murdock asked.

"I don't think so," Face replied as he took the copy out of his jacket and looked the papers over, "But I'm not sure if it's all here."

Hannibal reached into the stack and fished out one particular page and said, "I'd like to find out what the grandpa was talking about when he said floor plans, floor plans for what?"

"To where the money's hidden," Annabelle said, "It has to be."

"Yeah, but why would he put all his money in this house for them to find?" Hannibal asked, "If I had a family full of people I hated, I wouldn't leave it where they could get their hands on it, I wouldn't even leave them anything."

"Well Grandpa did," Face reminded Hannibal, "Maybe he thought it would be funny to watch everybody claw each other apart trying to find it."

"If that's the case however," Nora said, "Rogers should've told us that before he left."

"Speaking of which," Hannibal said to them, "I wonder where he _did_ go? Why should we assume he would leave in the company of the maid, the cook and the butler? What could they possibly all have in common?"

"They had to all be in on it together, they disappeared at the same time," Nora told him.

"As far as we know, but we _don't_ know," Hannibal pointed out, "Because we _don't_ know when they took off, all we know is when we got everybody up and discovered they were missing."

"But you said only one car is missing from the garage," Annabelle replied.

"Again, as far as I know," Hannibal told her, "However, let us assume for a moment that they all did leave in each other's wretched company, where would they go? For what reason?"

Murdock raised the hand that wasn't holding the ice on his eye and said, "Maybe they already found the money, took it for themselves and split. That would explain why they're gone and the will was torn up, because none of it would matter now."

"Perhaps," Hannibal considered, "But I think the money might still be in this house, it's just a matter of us finding it."

"How?" Annabelle asked.

Hannibal looked around to see if anybody was listening in on the conversation and said, "Presumably everybody went back to their own rooms and locked themselves in for the night. If that's true then that clears up which rooms we _can_ search without any trouble."

"What're we going to do, Hannibal?" Face asked.

"Well the will mentioned _floor_ plans. Why would it?"

The others looked to each other, silently debating the question. Murdock raised his free hand and said, "A secret room, Colonel?"

"Could be," Hannibal answered, "But I'm not above pulling out any loose floorboards either, there's no telling where the old man could've stashed his money."

"If it turns out those hired bums already took it with them, I'm going to track them down and kill them," Nora said.

"Nora, don't talk like that!" Annabelle told her.

"I mean it," Nora replied, "I didn't come to this walk-in tomb for the privilege of being bumped off, I came here to get the money that's rightfully mine, and I'm _going_ to get it."

"I have no doubt," Hannibal calmly responded, "We can cover more ground if we split up but I don't want anybody going alone, and I don't trust you and your sister going off by yourselves. So you'll come with me, and Annabelle will go with Face."

"What about us?" B.A. asked Hannibal.

"You and Murdock stay here," Hannibal told him, "Keep an eye out for anybody who might get in the way and see if there's any place in the living room that the money could be."

"Hannibal," Murdock lowered his icepack and suggested, "Can I trade places with you?"

"Why, Murdock?" Hannibal asked.

Nora was jabbing Hannibal in the shoulder and asked him, "Where're we going to look, anyway?"

"We'll start upstairs," Hannibal said, "Floor plans don't exclusively mean _ground_ floor."

"Can I come with you?" Murdock asked.

"Why?" Nora asked, "You scared of being left alone with Godzilla?"

"No," Murdock answered, "It's just that I'm afraid to let you go upstairs…without me."

Hannibal clapped his hand on Murdock's arm and told him, "We'll be fine, Murdock, you stay down here and help B.A."

Murdock turned and twisted one way and the other as he considered his options and finally gave in, "Alright, Colonel."

* * *

"I'm starting to wish I'd never come to this dreadful place," Annabelle said as she and Face went over every square inch of the sitting room again.

"Yeah, me too," Face told her, "Though one good thing came out of it."

"What good could possibly come out of everything we've been put through tonight?" she asked.

Face stood up from examining the floorboards and told her as he dusted himself off, "Well, I met you."

That made her smile but it was a short lived one as she replied, "I'll bet you say that to every woman you meet."

"Well you have to admit, it doesn't always go over so well with the guys," Face joked.

Annabelle shook her head laughing and turned her attention to a large framed portrait hanging on the wall and took it down to see if there was anything behind it. "No offense to your colonel, but I think he's crazy, a secret room in this house? I think he's been watching too many old movies."

"All due respect," Face returned, "Your sister said the same thing about your grandpa. So…he may be right."

"Well if he is," Annabelle said, "I don't know where a hidden room could be in this place. Seems to me there're too many rooms already out in the open as it is." She watched Face feeling along the walls and a thought occurred to her, "Face."

"Yah?" he asked as he kept his attention on the wall in front of him.

Annabelle came up behind him and asked, "Who do you think tried to shoot you at the top of the stairs?"

"Could be any one of your charming relatives," he answered.

"But why use Nora's gun?" Annabelle asked, "You saw yourself several of them had their own."

"Because," Face answered, "Somebody is trying to frame your sister. If memory serves me correctly, a person cannot inherit if they commit a felony to obtain it."

"But you're not even in the will," Annabelle reminded him, "So that doesn't make any sense."

Face choked on a laugh and said, "You think _this_ makes any sense? Now as I was saying, I'll just bet you if we got that gun dusted for prints, we wouldn't find anybody's on it _except_ your sister's. You see how well that works out? I wind up dead on the floor, morning comes, the house opens up, and in come the police to haul her off for 25-to-life for first degree murder. Everybody in this house knows that in keeping with our cover, she can't stand me being with you, so that gives her the motive, it's her gun so that's the means, and with the way this household's been tonight she had ample opportunity."

"But she was with Hannibal and Murdock when you were shot at," Annabelle said.

"True, _but_ their word wouldn't count for much since they're wanted fugitives."

"You think somebody found out about that?" she asked him worriedly.

"Well…" Face was left scratching his head on that one, "I don't know…"

"Besides," Annabelle thought of something else, "They'd have to know that Nora didn't shoot you, they have a test for that, a nitrate test, the police can check your hands for gunpowder, and if she hadn't fired the gun recently…"

That gave Face an idea and he asked Annabelle, "_Has_ she fired it recently?"

Now Annabelle really looked worried as she said, "Oh, I don't know. My God, then somebody could've been setting us up from the beginning."

"Somebody like the trusted family lawyer?" Face suggested.

Annabelle's eyes widened as she considered the possibility and she asked, "Do you really think…?"

"I don't know, it could be," Face told her, "Unfortunately at the moment we don't have much way of finding out anything."

Annabelle shook her head grimly and said, "I hope we _do_ find the money, and soon, I just want this whole night over with so we can forget about it."

* * *

In the living room, B.A. paced around the room keeping his ears open for any footsteps heading their way, but so far he couldn't hear anything. Murdock was seated in a chair in the middle of the room and watched as B.A. went back and forth and commented, "Keep it up and you'll wear a hole through the floor and fall clear to the basement."

B.A. stopped to see the floor, then looked back at Murdock and told him, "Shut up, fool."

Murdock had his knees pulled up near his chest and was chewing on the knuckles on one hand like it was his fingernails. A few minutes passed by quietly and agonizingly, and then suddenly, without warning, Murdock screamed at the top of his lungs and pulled himself up in the chair so he was standing on it, like a lady who'd just seen a mouse. The noise had been enough to bring Face and Annabelle running into the room, and after a few seconds so did Hannibal and Nora, and everybody was crowded around the man hovering over all of them on the chair and asking the same questions. Face and Nora grabbed at him like he was about to fall off, but Hannibal as always was the voice of reasoning and got the others to shut up as he asked Murdock what happened.

And then suddenly the look of utter panic was gone from Murdock's face, replaced with one of confusion and he looked down at the people standing around them and he turned to Hannibal and asked, "Who screamed, Hannibal?"

That one was about enough to send everybody falling to the floor in disbelief. Hannibal maintained his professional manner and answered simply, "_You_ did, Murdock."

"I did?" he asked in surprise, then he laughed and said, "Well, how about that?"

B.A. growled at him and Murdock immediately stepped down from the chair and moved between the colonel and the lieutenant.

"Alright," Hannibal said, "Just to make sure nobody gets into any_more_ trouble…" Murdock flashed the most innocent smile that he could manage, which was promptly dismissed as Hannibal continued, "B.A., _you_ come with me, and Murdock, _you_ and Nora check out the back rooms to this floor."

"How's that going to keep them out of trouble?" Face wanted to know.

Hannibal took his cigar out of his mouth and explained, "Well I figure it'll keep Murdock out of trouble where B.A.'s concerned."

"Good point."

* * *

Murdock finished checking every wall in the octagonal room behind the pantry and concluded, "There's nothing here."

"And there's nothing in the pantry either," Nora added, "I think your colonel has lost his mind."

"Well," Murdock paced around the room and tried to think. He went to the staircase and called up, "Hey Face, you find anything yet?"

A few seconds later they heard Face holler down, "No, Murdock, did you?"

"Negative, oh Facial One," Murdock shook his head, "We're moving on to other locations now."

"Alright but be careful!" Face called down to him.

"Aw Face, I'm _always_ careful," he said.

"The last time you said that," Face reminded him, "You took a header down the stairs."

Murdock waved off the remark and he and Nora left the room and went back to the kitchen.

"The floor in here is tiled so it couldn't possibly be here," Nora noted.

"Well since we know the servants are gone," Murdock said, "It won't hurt to check their rooms. They _might_ have missed something."

Nora nodded and followed him. Along the way to the living room however, Murdock stopped and Nora walked into him.

"What's the big idea?" she wanted to know.

Murdock pointed to the old phone on the wall and ran his finger along three buttons in particular that showed they ran extensions out to the garage, the rear gate and the basement.

"This place doesn't even have a front gate, what's it got a rear gate for?" Nora asked.

"Never mind that," Murdock said as he picked up the receiver and put it to his ear, "What if this is how the servants and the lawyer orchestrated their escape? Somebody's here in the house, presses the garage extension, that's the signal to start the car and open the doors, and then off they drive into the night. Hmmmm," he hung up the phone.

"What?" Nora asked.

Murdock turned to her and said, "I'm going to go out to the garage, and I want you to ring me up on the extension."

"Whatever for?" she asked.

"It'll be a little experiment, first of all we'll see if the line even works," he told her.

Nora shrugged and said, "Alright."

Murdock went out the back door and out into the pouring down rain and made his way over to the garage, pulled one of the large doors open and went in. The garage was dark and he had to feel his way around but he was able to find first the light switch, and then the phone on the wall, which had its extensions to the rear gate, the basement and the house. He reached to press the extension button for the house, but stopped when another thought occurred to him…the basement. He wondered...but he decided that would wait. The phone rang and he picked up the receiver, "Is that you?"

"Who else would it be?" Nora asked him.

"Can you hear the phone ringing from inside the house?"

"No, why?"

"Never mind, I'm coming back in," Murdock told her, and hung up.

He managed to get back into the house without getting soaked clear through, and when he got back he told Nora his new idea.

"The basement?" she repeated in disbelief.

"We know that there is a way out of that basement even after the doors up here were locked, maybe somebody was waiting down there and when the phone rang that was how they got out."

"But we'd hear a phone from the basement," Nora told him, then she thought of something else, "Wait a minute, wait a minute! We were in the basement, remember? I don't remember seeing any telephone down there and that is _not_ something you usually find in a basement."

"Doesn't mean it's not there," Murdock said, "You go downstairs and I'll ring its extension and we'll see if it's even still there. It might've been taken down some time ago but there's no harm in checking."

"Alright," Nora gave in, and turned to find the basement door.

While Murdock waited for her to go downstairs, he looked around the dining room and made his way over to the table that the record book was left on and he saw it was still open to where they'd all signed it, and in reading over the names again he made a shocking discovery. Unfortunately he didn't have time to tell anybody about his finding because at that moment, the lights went out again.

* * *

"What happened?" Annabelle asked Face as she reached over to him in the dark and clung to him.

"If it's that breaker again I'm gonna break somebody's face," B.A. grumbled down the hall.

Face saw a blinding light coming their way and shielding his eyes he was able to see past it and see that Hannibal was holding the flashlight.

"Are you guys alright?" he asked.

"We're fine, but what happened?" Annabelle asked.

"I don't know, I'm going back down to the basement to make sure the breaker in the fuse box didn't throw itself again, come on," he said.

They carefully made their way down the stairs in the dark, but halfway through the dining room the lights came on again and Hannibal turned off his flashlight.

"Hmmm," he said as he pocketed his flashlight, "Maybe that one was the storm."

"Hey," Face remembered something, "Didn't one of the maids say that they'd been having trouble at the power company?"

"You going to believe somebody who's not here?" Annabelle asked him.

"Well…"

"Hey man, be quiet," B.A. told him, "You hear that?"

Everybody stopped talking and they listened to hear what he was hearing, and from somewhere off in the house they heard somebody pounding on a wall or a door. They followed the noise through the kitchen and over to the basement door and by now were able to hear that Nora was screaming to be let out. Hannibal undid the latch and told her to stand back as he pushed the door open, and they saw Nora standing on the stairs looking up at them with wild eyes like a caged cat.

"Nora, what happened?" Annabelle asked.

"Get away from my sister!" Nora screamed at Face as she stormed up the stairs and practically tore Annabelle away from him. To her sister she said, "Trust them, they said, they're here to help us they said…" she turned to them again and drew her gun, "Yeah, I really believe that!"

"What happened?" Hannibal asked firmly but calmly, desperate to keep anything horrible from happening.

"What happened is that crazy pilot of yours," Nora told Hannibal, "You told us to pair off together and search the house, that insane pilot of yours left me when the lights went out, he threw me down the stairs to the basement and locked me in and he left!"

"That's ridiculous!" Face started to say, but put his hands up when Nora pointed the gun at him, "Murdock would never do that!"

"Well he did," Nora said, "As soon as the lights went out he shoved me through the doorway and closed it behind him."

"What were you doing in the basement?" Hannibal asked her.

"He _told_ me to go down there…he found out the phone has an extension running down to the basement and he wanted to see if it would work, had _me_ go down to see and that's when the lights went out."

Hannibal turned and went back to the dining room to confirm what she said. He took the receiver off the hook and pressed the button for the basement, and listened.

"The phone must've been taken out, it's not ringing," he told her, "In any case I never saw a phone when we were down there."

"That's what I said, but he insisted," Nora said.

"Well Murdock's always insisting things," Face told her as he walked by the table. He caught something in the corner of his eye and turned his attention back to the book on the table and he felt his heart drop in his stomach, "Uh oh."

"What is it?" Hannibal asked.

He went over to the table and they all saw what it was; where they had all signed their names when they arrived for the night, somebody and drawn a line through Face's name and crossed it out, and now, they saw a fresher, darker line of ink crossed through Murdock's name as well.


	9. Chapter 9

Face ran his thumb against the line drawn through Murdock's name and saw the ink smudge.

"Somebody just did this before we got here," he said, "But who? And where are they now?"

"And why?" Annabelle asked, helplessly trying to put the pieces together.

"Wait a minute," Nora said, "The ink on _your_ name is old."

"Well, dry anyway," Face replied.

"Right…meaning it was probably done just before whoever was standing at the top of the stairs took that potshot at you, right?" Nora asked him.

A strange look came over his face when he thought about it, "Hey, you could actually be right."

"Scary, ain't it?" she smugly remarked.

"But then what happened to Murdock?" Annabelle asked.

"I don't know," Face said.

"Did you hear anything when the lights went out?" Hannibal asked Nora.

"No, they just went out and…_somebody_ pushed me down the stairs."

"Where was Murdock?"

"In the dining room."

"Then you know _he_ couldn't have done it," Hannibal said, "You would've heard him coming."

"Then I would've heard _anybody_ coming," Nora told him.

"Meaning whoever pushed you was already there waiting for you," Hannibal said, "But who?"

"And why?" Annabelle added.

There was a momentary silence among them, as if they were awaiting the answer, and then the phone rang and everybody felt their hearts jump in their throats. A light was flashing on the telephone showing that it was coming through on another line from one of the extensions.

"That's the garage phone," Nora said, "Nobody could be out there…could they?"

Hannibal picked up the receiver and listened. Immediately he had to hold the receiver away from his ear because the muffled noise of somebody screaming repeatedly for help was near deafening.

"Is that Murdock?" Annabelle asked.

"I can't tell," Hannibal said as he hung up the phone, but placed the receiver at an angle on the switch hook so the line was still connected, "Wait here, I'll find out. B.A., you and Face go upstairs and get everybody back down here, I want to make sure nobody's given us the slip."

Hannibal went out the back door and kept his head down as he trudged through the rain over to the garage. He opened up the door and stepped inside and called out for Murdock, but he didn't hear anybody. He couldn't find the lights so he blindly felt along the wall until he found it. When the lights came on he found the phone on the wall with the receiver off the hook and dangling in the air by its cord. He picked it up and listened, but there was no sound on the other end of the line. He hung it up and called again for Murdock, but there was no response. He made his way around every square inch of the garage and found no sign of anybody there. Frustrated, and worried, he went back out into the rain and made his way back into the house, and by this time the whole household had been woken up once again and gathered on the first floor.

"Alright, everybody shut up!" he told the family, who quickly obeyed, "Now…Face, pick up that guest book and make sure everybody who's here checks with who's signed in."

"Right," Face went over to the dining room table and picked up the record book and started calling everybody's names one by one.

"What's all this about?" Jane asked.

"Somebody tried to kill us," Nora said as she got in her cousin's face.

"Well isn't that a shame?" she smugly replied.

Nora reached out and grabbed Jane's neck in her hands and throttled her, until Hannibal promptly came over and pulled her off of her relative and told her, "That's enough out of you, Nora, that's not going to help us find Murdock."

"Why, you mean he's gone?" Jane asked.

"That," Nora spat at her, "Is _exactly_ what we're saying. Somebody put the lights out, knocked me down the cellar stairs and now he's gone and we can't find him anywhere."

"Somebody was out in the garage calling for help," Face told the family, "But whoever it was is gone now…that's why we're conducting a roll call here."

"Well you don't think _we're_ responsible, do you?" Lucian asked.

"Maybe not you specifically," Hannibal conceded, "But somebody among you has to be the guilty party and I intend to find out who."

"This is preposterous," Roland told them.

"Oh really?" Hannibal responded, "Well right now you're looking like a very nice suspect for all of this, would you care to explain where you've been for the past half hour?"

"In my room," Roland arrogantly answered.

"You got any witnesses?" Face asked.

Roland put his hands on his sides and acted appalled and told him, "Certainly not!"

"Really, well I'm surprised considering how _close_ you all are," Face cynically replied.

"I want to make something clear right now," Hannibal told the Wiest family, "Until we find Murdock, _nobody_ is going to leave this house, I don't care if it's morning, I don't care if the whole National Guard is brought out here, until we find him, _nobody_ is allowed to leave this place. So if any of you miserable excuses for people know anything about what happened to him, I would recommend you start talking, because believe me, after a few hours in an enclosed space, the rest of us are going to lose our friendly dispositions and get downright _unbearable_."

However nobody was willing to admit to having any part in anything that had gone on that night, and that quickly became obvious.

"Alright," Hannibal told them, "We were willing to do this the easy way, but now we're going to do it _my_ way. We're going to tear this whole house apart to find him, and believe me that is not an expression, by morning there's not going to be a board still in place in this whole mausoleum."

"You can't be serious," Agnes said to him.

"Lady," Hannibal firmly replied to her, "I was never _more_ serious. Now either we find him, or come tomorrow morning the police are coming up here and rounding up the whole lot of you for conspiracy, harassment, kidnapping, and attempted murder."

"And if we don't find him," Face added, "I think we'll be able to up that charge to murder 1, now…if memory serves, California has reinstated the death penalty, which means the gas chamber."

"You can't have a murder charge without a body," Roland said.

"Oh no?" Hannibal got in his face, "Just try your luck, pal, I think you'll be _very_ surprised by what we're able to pull off."

Face tried to ignore the hand gripping the sleeve of his shirt and tugging on it to get his attention, but finally he turned to Nora and asked her, "What is it?"

"Why would anybody want to kill Murdock?" Nora asked, "He wouldn't get any of the inheritance money."

"I don't know," Face replied, "Ironically if Murdock was _here_ he could probably tell us what kind of psychotic it would take to kill somebody in a situation like this where money wasn't the motive."

"We're going to do as I said," Hannibal told them, "We're going to search this place from top to bottom."

"So we start at the attic?" Nora asked.

"No, I want another look at that basement first," Hannibal said.

"Why?" Nora asked, "We've all been down there, I was _locked_ down there, Murdock's not there…and you don't have a chance of finding so much as an old printing press with Nazi propaganda telling how to destroy the Allies down there."

"I'm not convinced yet," Hannibal told her, "I'm going down to that basement, but I need somebody up here keeping an eye on the Addams Family."

"We'll do that," B.A. said.

"If I were you though," Nora suggested, "I'd take somebody down with me."

"That's just what I'm going to do," Hannibal told her, and as he jerked her by the arm he added, "Come on."

"Me?" she replied.

"That's right, _you_ were the one thrown down the stairs, so let's see if anything's changed that you'll notice," Hannibal said to her as they cut through the kitchen to the basement door.

Nora groaned and muttered under her breath, "There isn't enough money in the world to justify spending the night in this revolving door."

* * *

"B.A., what do you think happened to Murdock?" Face asked.

"Got me, knowing that crazy fool, could be anything," he said.

"Well whoever tried to kill me _shot_ at me, but Murdock's disappeared completely, what can that mean?" Face asked.

"What I want to know is where did he go?" Annabelle asked, "We never ran into anybody coming downstairs before the lights came on, so he didn't go upstairs, and he wasn't in the basement with Nora."

"He might've gone up the back stairs," Face suggested.

"Or maybe he went outside," Annabelle thought.

"What? In this storm? He'd have to be…" Face didn't finish that thought because B.A. was nodding his head at him as if to say 'exactly'. He groaned and said, "Alright, alright, I'll go outside and see if by some chance he decided to go outside…into the pouring down rain."

"I'll go with you," Annabelle offered.

"No way," B.A. answered for Face, "No sense in taking a chance on two people disappearing tonight."

"What're you implying, B.A.?" Face asked, "That I can't keep an eye on her?"

"That's right," he said, "You' gonna have enough trouble making sure _you_ don't disappear, no sense you taking her out with you and losing her instead."

"Gee," Face said cynically, "Your confidence in me is _very_ overwhelming, you know that?"

"Hey man, something weird's going on here, and even with Murdock involved it's worse than usual," B.A. pointed out, "No point in making it worse."

Face still didn't feel any better about going out into the rain and asked, "What if he's upstairs?"

"Then he'll wait," B.A. said, "But if he's out there, then we gotta know."

Well, it was hard to argue with that logic. Face hit the outside light and reluctantly stepped out onto the porch and went down the steps and endured the cold rain pouring on him as he stepped out into the yard and called out into the night, "Murdock!" But there was no response. He made his way around to the side yard, every so often still calling the pilot's name but never hearing any response, the only thing he _did_ hear was the rain beating down, and every minute he stayed out there he just became soaked further through and chilled deeper to the bones.

Finally, when he decided that Murdock could not have _possibly_ gone outside, for whatever reason, of his own volition or otherwise, Face ran back around to the front yard, went up to the porch and back into the house where he proceeded to shake and shiver as if he'd been caught out in a blizzard instead.

"He's not out there, did anybody find anything in here?" he asked.

"No sign of Murdock yet," B.A. told him, "But that sucker Roland gave us the slip and is hiding out somewhere."

"Just like the little rat, find a hole and slip down it somewhere," Face commented as he went into the living room, "Does this fireplace work?"

"It should," Henry Fulton Wiest answered.

"Fine, then get one started," Face said, "That rain is _freezing_." He glared back at B.A. and added, "Even Murdock wouldn't be crazy enough to go out in that."

"That's assuming he had a choice," Annabelle told him, "But if it wasn't his idea to take off when the lights went out, then there's no telling where he _did_ go."

"I know it," Face replied, "Isn't Hannibal back from checking out the basement yet?"

"Yes he is," Hannibal said as he and Nora appeared in the threshold to the living room, "And I'm sorry to say our search turned up just as empty."

"Which only leaves the upstairs now," Nora added, "Two floors' worth of upstairs, that nitwit pilot of yours could be anywhere."

"Nora, have you seen Roland?" Annabelle asked.

"No, why?"

"Man gave us the slip earlier," B.A. said, "We had everybody stay where they at, but he got away when we weren't looking."

"Hmmm," Hannibal contemplated this newfound fact and said, "Somehow I don't think Roland's smart enough to orchestrate Murdock's disappearance, though he may be connected to whoever is."

"So what do we do now?" Nora asked.

"Tear the upstairs apart and look for both Murdock _and_ Roland, naturally," Hannibal answered.

"What about them?" Face pointed to the family members, who were all seated in the living room talking amongst themselves.

Hannibal went over to the doorway and saw that there were two large doors built into the walls, he pulled them out to see if they would close, and they made an awful screeching noise as they were pulled out of their hiding places, but they did come out and they did close. Naturally there was no lock on them but it wouldn't matter, he opened the doors again to get out and he told the family, "We're going upstairs to look for our friend and your cousin, and if I hear so much as one squeak out of these doors, we're coming down here and beating all of you senseless, you got that?"

"Too late for some," Nora murmured to him.

"And why should we listen to you?" Jonathan asked.

"Because I'm crazy enough I'm just liable to do something that I _won't_ regret in the morning," Hannibal answered with a sinister sneer, "You have no idea who came into this house tonight, but if you value your lives you won't try anything stupid now because I _will_ make sure you won't live to regret it if it comes to that."

Face felt somebody tugging on his shirt and saw it was Annabelle this time and she asked him, "You don't think there's any chance that Murdock's hiding in the closet again, do you?"

He looked back to the closet in the dining room and shrugged. "I wouldn't think he would, but I suppose it's possible, I'll check."

Face went over to the closet door and found it was locked this time. It was a weak lock made up of a small latch next to the doorknob, Face pushed the latch to the side and opened the door, and the only sound that could be heard after that was Annabelle's screaming.

Everybody came running into the dining room to see what was the matter and they were all horrified to see Roland's dead body sprawled on the floor as it had fallen out of the closet.

"Is he really dead?" Nora asked somewhat nonchalantly.

They turned him over and Hannibal felt the man's wrist for a pulse, and he nodded grimly.

"How'd he die?" Face asked.

Hannibal quickly found the answer in the form of a bullet hole that went through Roland's now bloodstained jacket, and led directly into his chest.

"He was shot," he answered.

All eyes were suddenly on Nora who stood her ground and responded that it hadn't been her. The entire family was in hysterics now and B.A. yelled at everybody to shut up, and they did, somewhat reluctantly.

"That is it," Hannibal said as he got up and went to the phone, "I'm calling the police _now_, we have just crossed the threshold into murder."

Annabelle was also about to the point of hysteria, she kept her hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming, though she managed to calm down long enough to ask Face, "You don't suppose that whoever killed him killed Murdock too, do you?"

"I hope not," Face responded.

Hannibal dialed the police and quickly explained that they needed to come up to Wiest Manor because there had been a murder. They all knew the risk that he was taking by doing this but apparently he had decided that it was a risk worth taking, somebody in the house was a murderer, there was no doubt about it, but they still had to find out who it was.

"Oh no," Hannibal heard Face groan and turned around as he hung up the phone and saw Face by the table looking over the record book again.

"What is it, Face?"

Face looked at him and turned the book around so Hannibal could see what he saw. Now, there was a line drawn through Roland's name on the guest list.

* * *

"This doesn't prove that Murdock's dead," Face said, "They crossed my name off and I'm still here."

"But who could've killed Roland?" Annabelle asked, "Nobody else followed him out of the room."

"Nobody we know about anyway," Nora replied, "Maybe the servants came back."

"But when would they have been able to cross his name out?" Annabelle asked, "We all had access to the dining room and never saw anybody in there."

"Then they had to have done it when our attention was diverted elsewhere," Hannibal said, "Even if somebody had been in the room all night, it still could've happened."

Annabelle groaned and asked, to nobody in particular, "What's going to happen now?"

"Well, the police will come out here, bring the medical examiner, they'll examine the body, declare the house a crime scene, interview and interrogate all of us, look for any possible motive any of us might've had to kill him and see if we had the means and opportunity and if they like any of us for it they'll arrest us and take us in town to the precinct."

Annabelle groaned again like she was suffering from a killer migraine.

"You don't think Murdock killed him, do you?" Nora asked Hannibal.

"No, but we better find him before the cops get here," he answered, "Luckily, between this house being so far away from civilization and the storm, we've bought ourselves a little extra time."

They tore all the rooms in the house apart in record time looking for the missing pilot, but the search turned up empty, it was as if Murdock had disappeared off the face of the earth, and it was right after they were faced with this revelation that there was a knock at the door, the police had arrived.

Hannibal was surprised because all that had come out to investigate the murder were two policemen, both of whom looked like thugs themselves. They were shown Roland's body, asked a lot of questions about who everyone was and why they were there that night and who had been the last ones with the deceased, etc. Their line of questioning might've been kosher but their execution of the questions made Hannibal feel like the Spanish Inquisition would've been a day at the beach compared to this, and he saw Annabelle and Nora just barely able to hold it together. He didn't know if Nora still had her gun or not, he didn't think it would matter much anyway since they could verify that her gun had been used once that night already and that target was still alive.

"Where is the medical examiner?" Hannibal asked one of the policemen.

"Got his hands full with two hit and run victims tonight," one of them answered, "Going to be a while before he gets here, and until then…"

"I know, I know, nobody goes anywhere," Hannibal said, "Well that ought to make it all the more interesting if the murderer _is_ one of the people here."

"And what is _your_ name?"

"I gave it to you already," Hannibal said.

"No you did not," the officer replied.

"I didn't?" Hannibal asked, "Well how rude of me," he said as he went over to B.A. and Face.

"Who are you?" the second cop asked.

Hannibal looked at him shocked and said, "Now don't _tell_ me you never heard of Horton," he pointed to B.A., "Morton," to himself, "And Norton," and pointed to Face.

"Never heard of them, what do you do?" the first cop asked.

"We're in the food import business," Hannibal said and pointed to himself, "Fine wines," pointed to B.A., "Pickle brines," and pointed to Face, "And lemon rinds."

"_Lemon rinds_?" the cop asked.

"Why certainly, haven't you heard?" Hannibal asked, "They're the latest in homeo-_pathy_," he spat in the cop's eye, "Treatments, people use them for everything now, they go through lemon rinds like Kleenex."

"What were _you_ doing here tonight?" the second cop asked him.

"Why? I'll tell you why," Hannibal answered, and pointed to Nora and Annabelle, "These two young women were warned that if they came tonight to try and collect their inheritance, they would be killed. My friends and I came here to offer our services as their own personal bodyguards for the night. Earlier tonight somebody tried to shoot at one of us. It seems to me that whoever _is_ the murderer in this house is taking his threats very seriously and making good on his promises so far."

"And where were _you_ when this man was murdered?"

"Now how should I know that?" Hannibal replied, "I don't know where _he_ was when he got killed, or when he was."

"You didn't hear a shot?"

"No we didn't hear a shot," Hannibal answered, "It's not out of the realm of possibility that the killer used a silencer or did it somewhere off in the house where we wouldn't have been as likely to hear it considering there are three floors on this house and we were all down here in the living room."

"You really expect us to believe that?" the first cop asked.

"I don't care if you believe it or not, but that's what happened," Hannibal said, "Also, I would talk to the other relatives and get the names of the servants who worked here and _also_ check out a lawyer by the name Thomas Rogers, they were also present tonight but they disappeared earlier and locked us in the house. Now if they're in any way involved I would suggest you find them before they hop a Greyhound to Mexico."

"He's not getting anywhere with them," Annabelle murmured to Face.

"We're not going to have any better luck," Face told her, "Come on, let's get out of here while they're not looking."

He, Annabelle and Nora slipped out of the room and quietly made their way into the sitting room, and a few minutes later they were joined by Hannibal and B.A.

"12,000 cops in Los Angeles and we get Mutt and Jeff," Hannibal said, "Something's wrong here."

"You just figure that out?" Nora asked.

"I guess it was a good thing that we didn't find Murdock _before_ they showed up but what do we do now?" Annabelle asked.

Face shivered and said, "How about we light the fireplace in _here_? I'm still freezing."

Annabelle looked over and said, "There's no wood for the fireplace in here."

"Just as well," Nora said, "Look at it, everything in this room is immaculate, you can tell that fireplace has never been used."

"I still say for an older house that's drafty and the fireplaces are the main source of heat, it's odd for it not to be used," Face replied.

"Hmmm," the gears seemed to be turning in Hannibal's head as he looked over at the fireplace.

"Uh oh, what is it now, Hannibal?" B.A. asked.

Hannibal went over to the fireplace, felt along all the edges of it and crouched down to look up inside of it and he said to the others, "The reason this fireplace has never been used is because it's not a real fireplace."

"What?" the others asked.

"How can you tell?" Nora asked.

Hannibal pointed up and explained, "No flue. Now people have chimneys for decorations but not usually fireplaces, I don't think…so then there must be another reason why it's here."

"Like what?" Annabelle asked, "A secret passageway?"

"Why not?" Hannibal asked, and started feeling along every inch of the fireplace, feeling for a latch or a lever or something.

"Sure, why not?" Nora asked, "This house wasn't weird enough to begin with, now the walls gotta jump out at you too."

"Hey, shhhh," Hannibal told the others, "Do you hear that?"

Everybody became quiet and listened, and they were all able to hear a low sound, though they couldn't tell what it was or where it was coming from. After a few seconds they realized that it was a muffled sound like somebody moaning.

"Murdock?" Annabelle asked.

"He's got to be in here somewhere," Face said.

"Well, not there," Hannibal pointed to the fireplace, but he walked along the wall with his ear against it, then to the next wall, and over to the opposite side wall, then he knew he'd struck gold. The moans were louder and coming from down by Hannibal's feet, he had B.A. come over and help him, they felt along the wood paneling covering the bottom of the wall, and discovered a latch that made the whole thing come loose. They took the panel off the wall and the moans were louder now, dropping the panel they were both shocked, as were Face and the sisters, when they saw Murdock bound and gagged and writhing around on the floor inside the wall, and he looked just about fed up from his effort to make his presence known.

"Murdock!" Face exclaimed in shock.

Hannibal grabbed the top of Murdock's body and B.A. grabbed him by the feet and they carefully pulled him out of the wall and rested him on the floor and Hannibal set to work untying him. "Murdock, are you alright? What happened?"

He pulled the gag out of Murdock's mouth and first the pilot spat to get the taste out of his mouth. He looked up at the others and said, "I was wondering if you were ever going to find me."

"Murdock, what happened?" Face asked.

"You got me, Faceman, when the lights went out somebody hit me on the back of the head and knocked me out, I woke up in _there_."

"You've been in the wall this whole time?" Nora asked.

"I guess so," he answered, "I don't know who did it though."

"Well you've sure missed an exciting time," Hannibal told Murdock as he untied his hands, "Roland is dead, somebody shot him, and the cops are here."

"Who killed him?" Murdock asked.

"We don't know," Face answered, "But now we've got to explain to the police who you are and why _you're_ here."

"Well that ought to be easy after everything else that's gone on around here," Murdock said.

"Are you sure you're alright?" Face asked him as they helped him up.

"Yeah, I think so," he said.

"Alright, let's face the music," Hannibal said.

They left the sitting room and started back to the dining room, but as soon as Murdock saw into the room and saw the police, his eyes bugged out and he started gasping and tried to back away from them.

"What's wrong, man?" B.A. asked.

Murdock pushed past B.A. and tried to hide behind him. Hannibal and Face each grabbed a side of him to keep him from running off and asked again what was the matter. Murdock made sure he was out of the view from the dining room and he told the others, "One of those cops in there, he's the one that shut me into the wall!"

"What?" Hannibal asked.

"I thought you said you didn't see him," Face said.

"I said I didn't know them, it's nobody from the house," Murdock answered.

"Well we know they're not cops either," Nora said.

"Not necessarily," Hannibal said, "But they're not here for any good either."

"So now what do we do?" Annabelle asked him.

Hannibal flashed his trademark grin and said, "I have a plan."


	10. Chapter 10

Before the police could spot them, they doubled back to the sitting room and discussed Hannibal's plan.

"You think it'll work, Hannibal?" Face asked the colonel, who was crawling around on the floor by the fireplace for some unknown reason.

"Could be," Hannibal replied somewhat optimistically.

"What are you doing?" Nora asked.

"I'm just trying to find out why a fireplace was put into this room if it wasn't built to work," Hannibal answered.

Nora guffawed and said, "Real or not, you look like a circus trainer sticking his head in the lion's mouth right about now."

And indeed Hannibal had stretched out and stuck his head into the fireplace to look around, he started feeling his gloved hands around every square inch of the fireplace's interior, and on the right side wall he found a latch and when he pressed it, the wall opened up.

"Hmmmm," he observed, "Like that board game, Clue, I wonder if this leads to the conservatory or to the billiard room."

"You're not seriously thinking about crawling in there are you?" Annabelle asked.

"Why not?" Hannibal asked, "You worried I'm going to disappear?"

"No, she's worried you'll get stuck in there being so fat," Nora told him.

"Ha ha," Hannibal dryly replied, "You just wait here, I'll find out where it goes."

"Be careful, Colonel," Murdock said, "We don't know what kind of crazy people we're dealing with."

"For once the fool's right," B.A. said.

Hannibal pushed the door open in the fireplace and crawled through the space and made his way along a dark, narrow tunnel. He estimated that he got about ten feet before the tunnel turned to the side, and he crawled along another eight feet before it turned again. He was able to see a shaft of light up ahead and scooting down a few more feet, he realized he'd done a U-turn through the walls and was now in the exact position where they'd found Murdock tied up. He crawled out of the wall and stood up and told the others, "Whoever designed that secret passage had a weird sense of humor."

"So now what?" Nora asked.

"We'll proceed on as planned," Hannibal told her, "We'll go back out there and keep Heckle and Jeckle busy, and Murdock, you stay back here and get ready, you know what you're supposed to do?"

Murdock nodded once and converted the action into something of a bow as he said, "I understand perfectly, Colonel, and I take great pride in being called upon for this job."

"How hard _did_ I hit you, Murdock?" B.A. asked inquisitively.

"Maybe somebody should stay with him," Nora suggested.

"No good," Hannibal shook his head, "They've already seen all of us, if anybody's not accounted for they're going to know something is up. Besides, Murdock can take care of himself."

Nora scoffed and said, "Based on what?"

"Come on," Hannibal headed for the door, "Before they come looking for us."

"Face," Murdock said as everybody started to walk out on him, "You said that my name _and_ Roland's have been crossed off the list?"

"That's right," Face answered as he pulled the door shut behind him.

Murdock stood in the sitting room by himself and he started counting off on his fingers in a singsong voice, "Ten little mudsuckers went out to dine, one choked himself and then there were nine, nine little mudsuckers stayed up late, one overslept and then there were eight, eight little mudsuckers getting into…" he shook his head and writing in the air with his finger, he crossed that out and then resumed, skipping directly to the end, "One little mudsucker left all alone, he went and hanged himself and then there were none." He glanced up at the ceiling as that thought hit him, he swallowed heavily and took one large step away from the center of the floor.

Then another thought came to Murdock and he remembered from a long time ago, he remembered learning a different version of the Indian rhyme when he was a kid, one that nobody used anymore, and once again he started counting off the ill fated Indians one by one, "Ten Little Injuns standing in a line, one toddled home and then there were nine, nine little Injuns swinging on a gate, one tumbled off and then there were eight. Eight little Injuns didn't believe in Heaven, one went to sleep and then there were seven. Seven little Injuns cutting up tricks, one broke his neck and then there were six. Six little Injuns all alive, one kicked the bucket and then there were five. Five little Injuns standing on a cellar door, one fell through and then there were four. Four little Injuns up on a spree, one got fuddled then there were three. Three little Injuns out in a canoe, one tumbled overboard and then there were two. Two little Injuns fooling with a gun, one shot the other and then there was one…"

He stopped, and started to rethink that idea. The numbers of the Indians didn't matter at the moment, instead he was looking at what the old rhyme said. "Two Indians fooling with a gun, one shot the other and then there was one." That was Face, he got shot, or let the killer think he'd been shot. "One little Indian standing on a cellar door, they fell through and then there were four." That was Nora, when the lights went out the killer knocked her down the stairs and locked her in the basement. So which one was he? Maybe he was the one supposed to kick the bucket, after all if the Team hadn't found him closed up in the wall…but then who was going to be the next little Indian? He tried to think, and he didn't come up with any answers, but it _did_ give him an idea.

* * *

"So Dick Tracy," Hannibal said as they rejoined the Wiest family in the living room, as well as the two 'cops', "Find out whodunit yet?"

"Not yet," the first cop said to him, "But I will."

"What century?" Face asked.

The cop glared at him and he smiled humorously and took a step back.

"Got any ideas who did it?" Face asked.

"If you think you're above suspicion then think again," the second officer said as he poked Face in the chest to emphasize the last couple words.

"Yeah? Well tell me something," Hannibal said, "Who do we have to get in touch with down at the police headquarters to get somebody competent enough to take on a missing person's investigation?"

"Who's missing?" the first cop asked.

"A friend of ours who came with us tonight," Hannibal said, "His name is Murdock, you'd know him if you saw him, he was wearing a bomber jacket and a blue cap and he may have been talking to his dog."

"Dog?" the second cop inquired.

"Yeah you know," Face said, "Those animals that run on four legs and are covered in hair and go 'bow wow, arf arf'."

"I _know_ what a dog is," the officer told him.

"Well that's what I said," Face innocently remarked.

"Is the dog missing too?" the cop asked him.

Face shrugged and replied, "Who can tell?"

Hannibal put his theatrical career to good use and was very convincing at making himself sound very worried as he added, "I do hope that we can find him soon, I don't know where he is, what he's doing, I don't know what time it is, I hope he's alright."

"As fast as he said all that," Nora murmured to Face, "He should've been an auctioneer."

"Shh," Face told her.

"Is there anything specific about this friend of yours that we ought to know about?" the first cop asked Hannibal.

"Oh no, not really, I don't think," Hannibal said, "I mean it's not like he has a heart condition or anything like that, I doubt it'll make any difference if he doesn't get his medication tonight."

"Medication? What medication?" the police wanted to know.

"Oh who knows anymore?" Hannibal turned to Face and said, "Templeton, you've got all of Murdock's pills, don't you?"

"Yeah sure, let's see," Face dug around in his pockets and pulled out several bottles in each hand and counted them off as he set them on the table, "These are uppers for when he gets depressed, these are downers for when he gets too hyper, these are sedatives for when he gets insomnia, and these are caffeine pills for when he sleeps too much…these are placebos, they don't do anything but he thinks they do so he needs them more than the rest. And let's see…oh, these are for distemper."

"Distemper?" the first cop asked.

"Yeah, he thinks he's a dog, you gotta go along with it and humor him," Face explained, and continued pulling out pill bottles and reading them off, "Let's see, these are for when he starts hearing voices, these are for when he starts seeing things, these are supposed to help when he starts sleepwalking…no, I don't think there's anything here that it'll hurt him to go without for the night."

"Your friend," the second cop said to them, "Sounds like a real nut to me."

"Well he starts to grow on you after you've known him for a while," Hannibal offered innocently, "I just wish I knew where he was, it's not like him to just take off on us like that."

"Maybe your friend's just hiding somewhere in the house," the first cop suggested.

"Oh I doubt that very much," Hannibal shook his head grimly, "You see we already searched the whole house from top to bottom before you came here. It's as if Murdock has vanished off the face of the earth."

While Hannibal kept the police busy, B.A., Face and Nora took the opportunity to slink away and made their way to the backdoor and let themselves out. It was still raining out but not as hard as it had been earlier. They found a police car pulled up into the driveway and went out to examine it.

"So they _are_ real cops," Nora said.

"I doubt it," B.A. said, "I'll bet if we called it in they'd say the plate number belongs to a decommissioned car sold at auction."

"B.A.'s got a point," Face told her, "People do this kind of thing all the time, they get phony police uniforms and buy genuine cars that have been retired from service, that way they can go around doing anything they want to anybody and they can get away with it because for all their victims know it _is_ the real police, so they're not going to call in any attacks that happen to them since everybody knows how well the department covers each other like a couple of Velcro gloves."

"So what do we do with it?" Nora asked.

"Hmmm," Face went around the car once, examining it briefly, and he said to B.A., "How easy do you think it'd be to release the brake and give this car a little _push_ downhill?"

B.A. grunted and scoffed and said, "Just get out of the way, man."

"What's going on?" Nora asked him.

"Oh it's a very simple thing, a very common mistake a lot of drivers make," Face said, "You know, they park their car at an upward angle on a hill and they forget to set the emergency break, so when they're not looking their car goes for a little downhill stroll without the driver along for the ride."

"And if they're keeping in touch with somebody through the radio, they lose that as well," Nora realized.

"Right," Face agreed.

"Alright," Nora said as she helped the two men push the car down the driveway, "But if these guys aren't real cops, where do you think they came from?"

"I don't know," Face said, "But they had to come up from somewhere."

"What if they were already here, hiding on the property?" Nora asked, "Suppose when Hannibal called the police, the phone had been set to ring up a number leading directly to them?"

"Now what would the odds of that be?" Face wanted to know as they stood back and watched as the black and white rolled down the hill and came to a sudden stop off of the road and against a tree.

"Hey man," B.A. said to Face, "What about those extensions on the phone? One went to the back gate of this place, have _you_ been back there?"

"I didn't see the gate," Face realized, "I'm not sure if there even still is one, maybe it's gone too like the basement phone."

"Or maybe those two goons in suits were at the back and had the phone rigged up so instead of dialing the police it went straight to the extension," Nora thought, "We can't prove it, but it _is_ possible."

"_Maybe_," Face was willing to give that the benefit of the doubt, "But we don't have time to check it out, we better get back in the house and find Hannibal before the cops or whatever they are start coming to look for us."

They doubled back to the house and quietly made their way in through the back door and closed it. Face grabbed one of the dish towels off the table and used it to dry his face and hair. B.A. grabbed another one and did the same, but Nora didn't bother with it, she knew that anybody would know she'd been out in the rain, her clothes were half soaked through, and it was more obvious on her than on the two of them. They crept back into the dining room and rejoined Annabelle as they watched Hannibal discussing something with the two policemen. Apparently nobody had noticed their absence, for which Face was very grateful.

"What are we going to do about the body?" Face asked Hannibal.

"That's already been taken care of," Hannibal told him, "The police moved Roland's body into one of the back rooms until the medical examiner can get here."

"Only way he'll be getting here is to be shot out of a cannon," Face murmured to Annabelle.

"What was that?" the first cop asked as he came up to him.

"Uh, nothing."

The cop turned his attention towards Nora and looked her up and down, and down, he saw her shoes were wet and were leaving a puddle on the floor.

"How did your shoes get so wet?" he inquired.

"From the rain," Nora answered honestly.

"What rain?" the cop asked.

Nora took a step back, did a double take, and flashed Hannibal an 'is he serious?' kind of look.

"What rain?" she repeated, and went to the front door to pull it open. With a little effort, she got the massive, hulking, front door open and by now everybody could see and hear the rain that had resumed pouring down in sheets.

"What rain?" Nora asked again, "_That_ rain you idiot. What rain? Of all the…"

"What were you doing outside?" the cop asked her.

"I was looking for Murdock," she answered, "What else would I be doing outside? In weather like this, on a night like tonight, are you crazy? It isn't fit out there for man nor beast."

"So what would _he_ be doing out there?" the other cop asked.

"He's crazy, haven't you been paying attention?" Nora asked.

"Crazy?"

"That's right, crazy as a loon," and as if to demonstrate, Nora strummed her lips with both sets of fingers like she was playing a double sided Jews harp.

"Is he dangerous?" the first cop asked Hannibal.

"Well you remember we said he thinks he's a dog," Hannibal said, "Like a dog, he tends to get a little edgy when he's caged in somewhere, you know, enclosed spaces, straitjackets, worst kind of claustrophobia imaginable. But I doubt we have any of that to worry about. I don't know _where_ he is but I'm sure that nobody just came up to him, knocked him out and locked him up somewhere…what kind of person would do something like that?"

"Well let me ask you a question, pal," the first cop said to him, "Did you ever consider the possibility that maybe it was this friend of yours that killed Mr. Wiest?"

Hannibal shook his head slowly, "No, Murdock wouldn't do that, furthermore I happen to know for a fact that he _couldn't_ do that because he was with me when we found the body."

Face, B.A. and the two sisters watched the policemen during this discussion; it was unlikely that they would blindly give themselves away for lack of thinking, that they would contest that idea with the fact that Murdock was _not_ with them when the body was found, but maybe there would be a look between them, a nervous tic, something, a small facial expression or muscular movement that would indicate they _knew_ he was lying to them. But so far there was nothing, which said to Face that these guys, whoever and whatever they were, were just as good of actors as Hannibal was.

"And what time was that?" the first cop wanted to know.

Hannibal consulted his wristwatch, "Let's see, you two clowns got here about half an hour ago, so I'd say close to three quarters of an hour ago. Exactly _how_ long does it take to put two hit and run victims on ice?"

"The medical examiner will get here when he gets here," the second cop told him.

Hannibal looked a little surprised and said, "Well he better get here soon, old Roland isn't going to keep all night you know, it's only fortunate that we're not in the dead of summer, because I don't think this house comes with any air conditioning, it barely even comes with any heating outside of those old fireplaces. Now I'll tell you what I'm worried about, it doesn't bother me so much the idea that Murdock is missing, what I'm worried about is that whoever murdered Roland may also have killed Murdock, or may be planning to. That's why we have to find him _as well_ as whoever the gunman is who bumped off Cousin Roland."

"And are you _sure_ that everybody who was in this house before is accounted for here and now?" the first cop inquired.

"Yes," Hannibal answered, "You see when we came up here tonight, everybody had to sign a book of records to confirm who was and wasn't here so it could be decided who would and wouldn't receive their inheritance."

"And _where_ is this book now?" he asked.

Hannibal had just opened his mouth to answer when he found himself plunged into total darkness, again. The lights had gone out in the whole house and everybody was bumping into each other and fumbling around trying to find the light switch. Nobody could tell who was walking into whom or where they were going. A couple minutes after the lights went out, everybody shut up when they all heard a low, ominous laugh emanating from somewhere that sounded both nearby and very distant.

"Who is that?" Face asked.

By now it sounded like the laughter was coming up through the floorboards, and then all of a sudden the laughing stopped, and was replaced by a low, sinister voice as it sang, "I'm a ghost, oooooooohhh, I'm a ghost, oooooooohhh, and I haunt all the bad little boys who tell big fibs and break up toys. I'm a ghost, oooooohhh, I'm a ghost, oooooooohhh, and I'm after kids that fuss and fight and never say their prayers at night."

Annabelle found her way over to Face and she whispered to him, "Is that Murdock?"

"I honestly have no idea," he answered, "I don't even know where that's coming from."

The lights came back on and everybody found themselves staring at one another, and alternating between looking up at the lights in the ceiling, and then down towards the floor where the singing seemed to be coming from. Hannibal found the answer in a heating grate built into the wall.

"Sounds like it's coming from the basement," the first cop said, "Anybody know who it could be?"

"Not me, I don't know anybody who lives down there," Face commented.

The living room erupted in a panicked scream and they went to see what was the matter. The rest of the Wiest family had been strangely cooperative with the police and had stayed in one place while they conducted their investigation and interrogation of the A-Team and the sisters, but now as Hannibal and the others went in they could automatically see that one of the chairs was empty.

"Who's missing?" he asked.

"Aunt Agnes," Jane said, her face flushed from screaming and one hand pressed over her heart, as if she was trying to give Sarah Bernhard a run for her money, except they could tell her terror was genuine, "She's gone!"

"Did anybody come into this room?" Face asked.

"Who could tell? The lights went out and everybody was moving around," Cousin Kyle said.

The police ordered everybody to shut up and calm down, and while they did this, Face and Hannibal and B.A. made a quick retreat back into the dining room. Face was going to grab up the record book and hide it, but he saw something that made his blood run cold and he reconsidered his idea, and he started yelling, "Officer! Officer, I think you better take a look at this."

The two cops came back into the dining room and demanded to know what was going on.

"Here's the record book everybody signed," Face said as he handed it to them.

The policemen took the book, and Hannibal saw what they saw: Agnes Wiest's name had also been crossed out now.

Author's note: The song coming through the heating grate originated in a 1935 cartoon called "Scrappy's Ghost Story".


	11. Chapter 11

"So now we've got one murder victim and two missing persons," Hannibal said, "What does it all add up to? And why?"

"And _how_?" Face added, "How did somebody come in here in the dark and make someone disappear? It's impossible!"

"Is it?" Annabelle asked.

"Those blueprints," Nora said, "Did we ever find them?"

"No we didn't," Hannibal said.

"Meaning whoever has them knows the layout for this house," Nora told him, "Knows if there _are_ any hidden rooms, secret passages, anything like that."

"Meaning," Annabelle leaned over to Hannibal and said quietly to him, "They also knew about the fireplace."

"Some secret," Hannibal replied, "A tunnel that doesn't go anywhere except a three quarter turn to end at the opposite side wall. For that they can keep the blueprints."

"But now what do we do?" Annabelle asked.

"What _can_ we do?" Face asked.

"The only thing that we can, search the house from top to bottom, and enlist the help of the rest of the family _and_ those 'cops'. After all they're supposed to specialize in missing people and right now we've got two of them, so they ought to come in handy for something."

"Don't forget, Hannibal," Face quietly murmured, "They helped _cause_ one of those disappearances."

"Exactly," Hannibal told him, "And former thieves have the best knowhow for catching new ones."

Face rolled his eyes at the colonel's idea.

"Come on, let's start looking, Agnes has to be here somewhere," Hannibal told them, "That is one person I doubt could disappear into thin air."

* * *

Murdock slowly poked his head out as he entered the kitchen, and feeling secure that nobody was around, he giggled to himself as he strolled in, quietly singing to himself as he went over to the liquor cabinet and liberated a bottle of sherry, "I'm a ghost, woooooo, I'm a ghost, woooooo, and I haunt all the bad little boys who tell big fibs and break up toys. I'm a ghost, woooooo, I'm a ghost, woooooo, and I'm after kids who fuss and fight and never wash their necks at night." He cackled to himself as he left the kitchen and headed back down the stairs to the basement where he'd left Agnes sitting on a crate.

"Here you go, Anti," he said as he handed her the bottle.

She took it, but not without asking, "Why am I here?"

"Shhhh," he put his finger to his lips, "I'm hiding you down here."

"What for?" she demanded to know.

"To keep you safe," he answered, "Whoever killed Roland is going to kill off more members of this family before the night's over."

"How do you know that?" she asked.

"Because those two girls upstairs were told they'd be murdered if they came here tonight," Murdock told her, "Somebody's determined to get their hands on Grandpa's money and if they can kill off everyone else, that only leaves them to inherit it anyway. Besides, by you disappearing _without_ it being a part of the killer's plan, he's going to start to panic and he's going to make a mistake so it'll be easier to catch him."

"And what makes you so sure about that?" Agnes wanted to know.

"Because I've had plenty of experience with the lowlifes in this world and I know how they think," Murdock explained, "You throw a monkey wrench into their plan and the whole thing crumbles to the ground, and lady, I _am_ that monkey."

Agnes snorted and said, "I'll believe that."

Murdock shushed her again and told her, "You keep quiet and nobody's going to know you're down here."

"Well how fortunate for me," she said dryly, "And suppose _you're_ the murderer?"

"Lady, do I look like I could have it in me to kill someone?" Murdock asked.

"Yes," she answered without missing a beat.

Murdock did a double take and told her, "Boy you really know how to hurt a guy. Don't be ridiculous, if _I_ was the killer, it would be one thing to tell you _why_ I'm doing it, but why would I explain what it took to blow my plan to hell?"

That comment left her speechless.

"Now you," Murdock said, "Be quiet, and nobody ought to find out you're down here, that completes my first trick, my next one is to get some of the others down here as well."

"But how are you going to know which ones of them _aren't_ the murderer?" Agnes asked.

"That's why it's a trick," Murdock told her.

* * *

"I don't like this," Nora confided in Hannibal, "Those men, whoever they are, they know the layout of this house better than we do."

"That's why somebody's watching them," Hannibal told her.

"Who?" Annabelle asked.

Hannibal pointed out to the hall, they looked and saw B.A. was paying attention to what was going on in the next room through a crack in the door.

"Where do you think Aunt Agnes is?" Annabelle asked.

"I'm not sure," Hannibal replied, "However, I'm not above suspecting Murdock's behind it, it just seems like something he would do."

"Why would he do that?" Annabelle asked.

"If _he's_ the one who made your aunt disappear into thin air, then he's doing it to throw the killers off, to make them worry, if they worry, if they panic for one minute, then they're going to slip up and it'll be easier for us to catch them."

"But don't we run the risk of finding him then?" Annabelle asked.

"Oh I wouldn't worry about that, Miss Wiest, Murdock has a habit of not being found when he doesn't want to be," Hannibal told her.

"I doubt that very much, Mr. Smith," Nora replied, "You don't know this family."

"We don't know that the killer _is_ someone in the family," Hannibal reminded her, "I'm not ready to cross that two bit shyster lawyer and those ghouly house servants off the suspect list, until we find the money, anybody is fair game for the suspect list. If there _is_ a working secret passageway somewhere in this house, then that's how they got back in after the house was locked up, and once we find that, we can find an easier way to get out of here and to get the police." He scratched his head and said again, "I'd like to find out who had the screwy sense of humor to make that tunnel behind the fireplace."

"Maybe whoever made it never had a chance to finish it," Annabelle thought.

Hannibal snorted and replied, "Come up with something that idiotic, whoever it was better hope that's all it is." He grabbed the sisters by their wrists and pulled them towards him and said, "Now remember what I told you, go over everything in this room, especially the walls, and the flooring under the furniture, even if it _doesn't_ look big enough to squeeze a human body through, _don't_ overlook it, there's no telling what kind of insane minds put this house together."

* * *

Murdock giggled to himself as he quietly shut the cellar door behind him and quietly sang to himself as he crept through the dark house, "I'm a ghost, woooooo I'm a ghost, woooooo, and I haunt all the bad little boys who tell big fibs and break up toys. Woooooo, don't tie cans to a doggie's tail, woooooo, I'll get you when the moon turns pale…"

He knew that by now Hannibal had to have worked his magic and gotten everybody upstairs to search the rooms, so he felt that he was safe to walk around for a bit and conduct a little investigation of his own. Hannibal wasn't the only one who possessed some knowledge about hidden rooms and secret passageways in older homes. As a teenager he had traveled and met with some of his more distant relatives down in the south and the northeast. Some old homes there, it was a family secret, were notorious for the walls jumping out at you whenever you touched something; he'd learned that some of those old places had been stations for the Underground Railroad during the Civil War and headquarters for the colonial spies during the Revolutionary War. Though they weren't close, it always gave him a sense of pride that his family was so active during those times. During his visits there he would try turning the houses inside out discovering all the hidden rooms and tunnels under the homes and the garages; after a while he'd felt like a mouse running a maze but he'd had a good time with it and after several tries managed to crack every hiding place in each home. So, he decided with everybody else upstairs, he could do a little checking of his own and see if there was anything they had overlooked during their initial scan of the place.

Moving along slowly, Murdock carefully ran his hands over every square inch of each wall, he checked every part of the floors that weren't common walking areas: under the tables, under throw rugs, under chairs, he even went into the closet they'd found Roland's body in and checked the back wall and the floor for a lever or a trap door, anything, but he found nothing. Of course it would be so much easier if they could just find the blueprints, but then where would the fun be in that? he asked himself. Well, so far his efforts were bringing him up empty handed. He didn't dare turn on the lights, even though he listened closely and didn't detect another person breathing anywhere nearby. He couldn't even hear the footsteps of the people walking around upstairs, then an idea occurred to him and he sure hoped everybody was still up there. He'd hate to think everybody disappeared at the same time.

He came to a closed door and used his memory of their search earlier to determine it was one of the downstairs bedrooms for the servants. The door was unlocked and he made his way in and resumed feeling his way along all the walls and the floor. He was able to squeeze himself under the bed since the bedstead was built higher like the old ones were, and he checked every inch of the floor under the bed but still found nothing. So he crawled out from under there and instead groped around the floor under the dresser's legs. Nothing on the floor, but his hand did brush against something that was on the bottom of the dresser. It felt like something had been taped there, he tried peeling it off with his fingernails; it took a few tries but he finally heard the tape rip off and he felt a folded up piece of paper. Pulling his arm out he felt an edge of the paper and shook it to unfold like a map. It was a large piece and he wasn't sure what it was, but he had his suspicions. Unfortunately he didn't get a chance to find out if his suspicions were correct because the next and last thing he felt was something hitting him in the back of the head.

* * *

"Did you hear that?" Annabelle asked.

"What?" Nora asked, and by now they also had Hannibal and Face's attention as well.

Annabelle looked to them and she said, "I thought I heard something downstairs."

"Maybe Aunt Agnes found her way back from that black hole," Face joked.

Hannibal signaled for Face to be quiet and he murmured to them, "Let's check it out," and one by one they left the room and crept down the stairs.

"Alright, where'd you hear it?" Hannibal asked her.

"I'm not sure," Annabelle replied, "I would've sworn I heard something drop."

"Alright," he told the others, "We'll take it one room at a time, keep your lights off until I say otherwise."

Everybody kept within arm's length of one another and slowly made their way through the dark rooms, up to a point, then once they got through the living room Hannibal noticed that there were a couple less set of feet to trip over. "Everybody still here?"

"Yes," they answered.

B.A. got further away from the others and he was able to hear the low sounds of somebody moaning. "Hey Hannibal," he whispered, "Over here."

They got into the hallway leading to the servants' rooms and about tripped over something in the middle of the floor. Hannibal turned on his flashlight and they were shocked to see Murdock laying crumpled on the floor with bloodstains under his head.

"Murdock!" Annabelle cried as she knelt down beside him.

"Is he dead?" Nora asked somewhat casually.

Hannibal also knelt down near the body and examined him. "No, just unconscious."

Annabelle gasped and picked up a fireplace poker, also covered in blood, and obviously what had been used to attack him.

"Who could've known he was here?" Face asked.

Annabelle was near hysterics again as she took his limp hands in hers and was nearly crying, "Oh, Murdock."

A noise escaped from the pilot's lips and everybody was shocked. He opened his eyes and in the dim lighting, he saw the beautiful girl hovering over him and he smiled, "Aw, Annabelle," he raised her hand to kiss it when he saw the red stains on it and he gasped, "Blood, there's blood on your hands, oh poor Annabelle they've murdered you."

"That's not her blood," Nora told him, "It's _yours_."

"_My_ blood!" Murdock shot up, "They killed me, the dirty rats! Where are they? Ghost or no ghost I'm going to…"

"Murdock, calm down!" Hannibal told him, "Are you alright?"

Murdock reached around to the back of his head and said, "My head hurts, Colonel."

"No wonder," Face said, "Let's see how bad it is."

Hannibal repositioned his flashlight and they saw a small gash on the back of Murdock's head.

"Nothing that we can't take care of," Hannibal said, "But what happened?"

"I was in one of the bedrooms down here and somebody put my lights out," Murdock answered as he grimaced under Hannibal's touch.

"Which bedroom?" Nora asked.

"Ouch…I don't know, but I'd found something taped under the dresser, I'm not sure but I think it could've been the blueprints…that's when they hit me."

"Somebody else is in this house," Face realized.

"And they know who Murdock is," Annabelle said.

"Maybe not," Nora added as she noticed something, and she asked the pilot, "Where's your cap, and your jacket?"

"I left them down in the basement," Murdock answered.

Hannibal turned back to Nora and asked her, "Are we missing something here, Miss Wiest?"

"It's just that without them, from the back Murdock could be almost anybody, and from the back he _does_ look a bit like Cousin Kyle."

"Then they probably thought that's who I was," Murdock realized.

"Unless it _was_ Cousin Kyle," Face pointed out.

"We left them all upstairs," Hannibal reminded him, "They couldn't have gotten down here without somebody noticing they were gone."

"Are you sure about that?" Nora asked him.

Hannibal met her questioning gaze and paused for a few seconds before replying, "Almost completely."

The others groaned.

Working by the light of the flash lest they draw anybody else's attention, Hannibal cleaned Murdock's wound. "Fortunately he got you in a spot where you don't have too much hair to get in the way."

"Should've hit him in the front then," Nora said, "He's got about the tallest forehead I ever saw."

Murdock turned his nose up at her remark, and flinched at the sudden spike of pain that sent through the back of his head.

"You sure you're alright, Murdock?" Hannibal asked.

"Nothing that money won't cure," he joked.

"Murdock, I've got a question for you," Hannibal said, "Were you aware that Aunt Agnes has disappeared?"

"Hmm," Murdock tried to act innocent, "Yeah I may have known something about that."

"Where is she?" Annabelle asked.

"She's safe and sound down in the basement," he answered, "Last I checked on her she was nursing a bottle of sherry."

"Maybe you better get back down there and make sure she's still safe and sound," Hannibal suggested.

"I will," Murdock nodded and turned to go back the way he came.

"What do you think?" Hannibal asked the others.

"If he _did_ have the blueprints, then whoever knocked him out has them now," Face replied.

"And they're going to find the money first," Nora said, "I'll still bet it's one of those cops."

"Couldn't be," Hannibal reminded her, "They're upstairs too."

"Sure, _looking_ for the hidden room it's stored in," Nora said.

"Of course," Hannibal agreed.

"Then what're we doing down here leaving them unattended?" Face asked, "Come on."

* * *

"Well, Sherlock," Agnes said as Murdock made his way back down to the basement, "Any luck eliminating the suspects?"

"Not yet," Murdock answered as he rubbed the back of his head, "Somebody may not have had it in for _me_, but they got me all the same."

"What're you talking about?" she asked.

"I think I had the blueprints that explain where Grandpa's money is hidden, but somebody beat me in the head and stole them," Murdock explained.

"Can't you do _anything_ right?" Agnes asked sharply.

Murdock looked at her and said, "Sure, come with me, I can throw you back to the wolves and let whoever plugged your nephew Roland take a few potshots at you too, maybe he can't hit the broad side of a barn but he might be able to give you a nose job you'll never forget."

"Get your hand off of me," Agnes said as she drew her arm back and jabbed him with her elbow.

"I should've left you up there," Murdock said, "Not only are you too mean to get murdered, if the killer wanted to get creative and tried to stab you, he'd wreck his knife."

"Oh yeah?" Agnes replied, "Well I never asked for your help."

"Ironic, ain't it?" Murdock asked, "You know what, Anti, despite you being a rotten excuse for a human being I really don't think you've got it in you to want to see those two young girls get butchered by a homicidal madman just over some inheritance money."

"Well," the middle aged woman said to him, "What do you propose to do about it? You already pointed out we don't have any way of determining _who_ the killer is."

"No, that's right, we don't," Murdock responded, "So I'm just going to have to bring some more of them down."

"Whatever for?" Agnes asked.

"One unexpected disappearance is going to shake the killer up, but if relatives start disappearing left and right, he's going to think he's lost his mind," Murdock explained, "And that is my area of expertise…one of them anyway." He looked to the woman and told her, "That's going to be one trick, another one is going to be finding out who has those blueprints and getting them back from that person."

"And how," she asked him, clearly not convinced that he could do it, "Do you intend to find that out?"

"Obviously I'm going to need a plan," Murdock told her.

"And do you have one?" she asked haughtily.

Murdock thought about it for a minute and decided to rely on one of Hannibal's answers, "Not yet."

* * *

"I don't know who or what it is you're expecting to find up here," one of the cops told Hannibal, "But we've been up here for half an hour and there's nobody here yet."

"Oh you don't know Murdock," Hannibal assured him, "He's a master in the art of hiding, if he thought he could pull it off he'd squeeze himself into a vase if he didn't want somebody to find him."

"Uh huh, I see," the cop said condescendingly, "And where do you think your friend is hiding now, in the drawers?"

Hannibal looked to the dresser and said, "Na, too short…however, he may be hiding in the closet, or in that trunk, or under the bed, and he could be doing it in any room on this floor, or even up on…" he turned to the others and asked, "Say, what _is_ up on the third floor?"

Everybody chorused back that they didn't know. Hannibal just shrugged and said, "Well, we'll have to search up there next, at least in the meantime, I _think_ it's a safe bet that if he is up there, he won't be able to get past the second floor without our knowing."

"Unless he decides to jump out the window," the cop responded.

"Well there _is_ always that possibility," Hannibal concurred, "However he's past that stage of thinking he's a bird, so I doubt that."

The cop did a double take and said, "Your 'friend' sounds like a real loon."

Hannibal nodded as if he was seriously considering it and said, "Well, there's that too."

Out in the hall, Face was going over the spot where presumably the suit of armor had fallen from earlier and found himself still trying to figure out _how_ it had been pulled off. Obviously it hadn't just fallen, it had been knocked down the stairs, but from where? And by who? That was what he couldn't figure out, and to be honest he doubted he ever would, or that it would even matter much. One thing Face did think about though was that the armor must've brushed up against the grandfather clock that stood against the wall behind the banister because it had stopped. He checked his watch and was about to set it for the correct time and try to get it running again when the lights went out again.

"Boy this is _some_ storm we're having," he commented dryly.

"Everybody stay together," Hannibal told them, "The last thing we need is a third person disappearing. Is everybody here?"

"Yes," he heard everybody respond.

"Hey!" Nora's voice broke through the others.

"What's the matter?" Hannibal asked.

"Annabelle's gone," Nora said.

"Boy whoever's doing this sure is good," Face noted, "Kidnaps somebody he can't even see, and this time he makes off with the pretty one. OUCH!" Even though it was dark and nobody could see who was standing next to them, somehow Nora managed to make her way over to Face and hit him.

A few seconds later the lights came on and then they could hear Annabelle screaming from somewhere down on the first floor; this time _everybody_ went racing down the stairs and they found her in the dining room with her back against the piano as she sank to the floor.

"What happened?" was the question on everybody's mind.

Nora grabbed Annabelle and jerked her back to her feet and repeated the question, and Annabelle's only answer was, "Somebody grabbed me."

"Who?" Nora asked.

"Was it Murdock?" Hannibal asked.

"No!" Annabelle shook her head, "I felt somebody grab me in the dark and when the lights came on I saw him, and I screamed, it was so horrible!"

"Which way did he go?" the second cop wanted to know.

"He took off to the back and ran out the kitchen door," Annabelle pointed weakly as she was about ready to collapse again, "Oh it was horrible, I thought he was going to kill me."

The two cops looked at each other and one went to the back door and went out to investigate; the one who remained looked around at everybody as if trying to determine if this was a joke.

"How'd you get down here?" he asked Annabelle.

"Somebody grabbed me when the lights went out, he brought me down here," she answered.

"And why do you think he did that?"

"How should I know?" Annabelle asked, very close to losing it, "All I know is we came here tonight to inherit part of Grandpa's money, now there's a killer loose in this house, anybody who could tell us anything about what's happening has disappeared, and we're all walking around with prices on our heads." She groaned and added, "Oh I wish this night were over."


End file.
